Early on, completed projects produced a response I needed to be careful of. After all, I did spent several hundred hours slicing images and positioning pixels on table layouts. Have a critique against my design? Take a number. What's this I hear about divs and tableless designs? Seriously.
My knee-jerk reaction was to protect my masterpiece.
Looking back, I'm grateful I gave up that thinking. While it is good to maintain true to a unique style, change forces me to break and rethink my designs. That doesn't mean sell out and put a 2.0 gradient style on all your buttons. It does mean an ongoing evaluation. I think Jeffery Zeldman sums it up best,"If your old work doesn’t shame you, you’re not growing."
Keep at what you're doing, but remember that there's always room for improvement. CSS does work. Don't worry, tables (data grids) still have their place.
Here's a great list to start with.
