This is a really really flexible layout that does not make use of tables and can be used as either a 1,2 or 3 column layout by simply including or omitting the left and right columns. The content is king, so the content comes first in the html followed by the rest. The structure is controlled via CSS with a little bit of coolness added on thanks to jQuery.

The top banner code is there only to show what is possible, the reason I built this was to have one template that could handle any layout. The interesting thing about the top banner though is that there are two background images on top of each other which creates a lot or flexibility when it comes to banner imagery that overlaps the extents of the 960 by x height banner area.

I have used one jQuery plugin to force equal height columns (1kb) and made use of the cdn for the jquery source.  So this should be really quick as well as flexible.

Demo