"Once you open this can of worms, it takes a bigger can to recan them."

Browsers like to do this. They calculate how things fit based on columns and rows. And they do it whether you hard code your html or use pagebuilding software.

So you change the size of A. This makes more room for B, so it resizes. But now C, below it resizes too, changing the size of D. Cascade!

On top of that, Firefox and Internet Exploder have different rules on how they render margins, borders, and padding, which the pagebuilding software can't easily allow for.

This is one reason I don't like pagebuilding software. It's much easier to get stuff to locate right if you do it yourself with style sheets.

If I need iron control, I use the width style, as a percentage of the page or container width.

And I still find myself checking different browsers to see if my design falls apart whenever I change something. IE is the browser with the antsy-est behavior.

Quite honestly no_content, only learnt about layout mode after reading this post (used to grid in Golive if I'm not mistaken). This is the way i see it, it's just a fancy way of doing tables (which you can do yourself, with a little bit of patience and nesting). Provide me with a print screen or sketch, maybe i could be of some help.