Newbie - Design approach?

Hi all -

I'm new to your list, and fairly new to web design; so i hope I'm in the
right place for some advice.
Unfortuneately, mine is a fairly vague question, as I don't have the
experience to know what it is I want to ask :-(

"Where I'm coming from"  :
My background is a VB6 programmer; so I can pick up well enough; but finding
the various different ways that different browsers rendered the same code
was a nasty shock!
So I'm delighted about the W3C standards; and less so about current
(incomplete and different!) adherence of browsers to them.

My first attempt at a site led to a battle with hyperlink backgrounds which
i finally gave up on-
they look great in IE6, but not in Netscape and Opera; I made some progress
with these 2, but finally  gave up, as none of the design forums i asked
could help;
(unless maybe i go to another list here - later).

Other than my first site; i have read countless on-line tutorials for HTML,
CSS and JavaScript;
I've read O'Reilly's "HTML and XTML Definitive Guide"; and I'm midway
through Teagues Visual Quickstart "DHTML and CSS for the WWW".
And O'Reilly's "JavaScript Definitive Guide"  is waiting its turn.

So; reading all this has taught me alot aobut what can and can;t be done and
how;
but has also led to more questions.

"What i want is"
- a document, a chart, or some thorough explanation and description of a
design approach;
I'll write it if there isn't one, but i don't have the information and
experience that that would take.

I want to:
Use .css from the start.
Write to W3C standards and get validation.
Use HTML, DHTML, JavaScript - but nothing more fancy.

I know that some users -
Have older browsers,
have "noframes"
have smaller screens
have JavaScript disabled
(I also read that they can have "no tables enabled" - does this mean
"text-only", or is there another level in which they can have images but not
tables?)

I want backward-comptibility;
but i also want W3C validation, which means using deprecated tags until
browsers can use all CSS2 tags, which my reading tells me that even IE6/NS6
cannot, in all cases.

I gather that there are some CSS2 tags/attributes that no browsers can yet
recognise or use correctly;
to get their intended effect means using old methods which are due to be
replaced, when (if?!) browser s/w catches up with standards;
Some things have been replaced by CSS in the latest browsers, but I'd still
need to use deprecated tags to render correctly in older level browsers;
so what does that do to validation?

I know there is a "transitional level";
so what i'm asking for is your experience for a design approach:
what can be done within the confines of W3C validation, (full and
transitional)
what needs to be done for backward compatibility,
what tags are deprecated and how to replace them in css
(ok, the principles of replacing fonts and positioning in style sheets I
understand,
or are clearly explained in the books I have to hand;
- but not all; for example, how to replicate the action of <span> which is
deprecated).

It isn't so much code explanations that I'm after, as a check-list of things
to do and not do, to get
1/ full usage of all the good bits in HTML/DHTML/XHTML/CSS/JavaScript
2/ validation and
3/ browser compatibilty and
4/ backward compatibilty and
5/ non-dependence (but usage of) of JavaScript and frames for differnt
users.

Many of these are, I assume, "mutually exclusive"' and I'd have to offer
different sites or pages,
depending which had a higher priority, validation  or backward compatibilty.

But i don;t know enough!

I think that that explains what i want, and i hope someones(s) out there can
either point me at a resource
that tells it to me, or can take the time to explain it all or some of it -

many thanks for any and all hints and comments -

hilma
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