I use dreamweaver, but I use code view, not the other view.
Dreamweaver has a thing it puts into all html pages. It defines the document as XHTML 1.0 Trasitional. I kept that definition and used css absolute positioning in my page. It didn't work. Then I removed the XHTML definition, it worked fine. Why does this happen? Have w3c made things really tight with XHTML?

No. I use XHTML STRICT and CSS and there are no problems with the doctypes and absolute positioning. The problem lies in DW's insistence of putting position:absolute on EVERYTHING, which is bad coding and not the best way to layout a site.

Use the normal document flow and learn to use floats and you'll have much more success.

When creating a new page in Dreamweaver, in the New Document box you will see Category:Basic Page | Basic Page: HTML

The third column is the Preview panel. At the bottom of that Panel you will see a pull down menu for "Document Type (DTD)." You can use that pull down menu to select from HTML 4 (strict or transitional), XHTML (strict, transitional, 1.1, or Mobile).

It is a good idea to know the difference between the Document Types, you can research this in the Dreamweaver help file and on sites like W3C (which might be a little daunting) or on w3schools.com.

You should not have the problem that Ladyn is referring to about the positioning. You are hand coding and this is only an issue if you are relying on the Dreamweaver WYSIWYG features. Dreamweaver can be a great tool for hand-coders but you do have to suffer the slings and arrows of the coding purists that think it is only a WYSIWYG editor.

And if you think I'm one of those people, Dan, you are wrong. DW is a very good tool.. but it's a BAD tool in the hands of beginners who can't code by hand and only use WYSIWYG mode - which usually results in a page full of absolutely positioned elements.

If the absolute positioning 'didn't work' then we need to see some code to figure out why.

Hey, I wasn't accusing =) I just know from experience that, even though I write clean code, I get blasted by the community for even mentioning Dreamweaver.

So has anyone tried out the web features of Quark XPress yet? (kidding)

Yes, some people have a real hatred of DW, even if it is used properly in competent hands I like DW, it has it's uses. If they'd fix the CSS rendering in their internal viewer, I *might* use it more. To me that means they have to stop using IE as their rendering engine.. it stinks.