Layers allow for more accurate positioning of elements than tables allow. Layers are quite easy to use, but they are pretty powerful and require thinking about. They are not supported too well in early browsers, but they are fun to play around with ...

This is a basic page made up of layers. The title is one layer and then this text box is another.

To insert a layer you can just choose Insert - Layer. You can then format the layers as normal or use stylesheets. You can also move them around and resize them. The ruler and grid tools are particularly useful for helping with this (View - Rulers - Show & View - Grid - Show)

In order to avoid problems with layers and older browsers you can convert layers to tables using Modify - Layout Mode - Convert Layers to Tables. However, in order to do this you need to make sure that none of your layers are off the edge of the page and that the layers don't overlap (View - Prevent Layer Overlaps). To see what this looks like have a look at the tables page I created from this layer version.

Layers and Behaviours

You can combine layers and behaviours to make your pages more interactive - have a look at my Star Wars page to see how this works.

This is done by creating the layers, and then using the behaviours option to specify how each layer can behave. Not very exciting at the moment I'm afraid, but hopefully I can get more interaction over the next few weeks.