Finding the Right Zombie Trashing Tool

When to use what

With all this knowledge under your belt, you have multiple options to achieve an apocalyptic CSS layout. It is important to know which technique works best under a given situation. The following table summarizes the information:

Property	Complexity level	Great at	Terrible at
Tables	Low to high, depending on the implementation	Rigid and even complex layouts if you can get away with a single size screen and can build for that (which is unlikely in today’s multi-screen environment)	Anything responsive; also, there is no separation of content and visual structure
Positioning	Low	A small number of design/content elements placed in odd locations or only slightly offset from the regular flow	Any complex layout
Floating	Low	Allowing content to wrap around an image or other visual element, two columns or even three columns as long as the content in each column is separate from the others	Any complex layout
Columns	Medium to low	Separating large swaths of text into connected columns	Complex layouts that contain more than text
Flexbox	Medium	Lining items up either horizontally or vertically. And being flexible to multiple screen sizes	Lining things up in more than one direction at a time and keeping things aligned
Grid	High	Complex layouts and keeping things aligned in two directions at the same time	Minor layouts (too complex for quick needs; shines at page-wide/section-wide layout)

But the point to note is that all are excellent tools for creating complex layouts, and you can even use them in combination.