I'm making more of an effort to separate my html structure from presentation, but sometimes when I look at the complexity of the hacks or workarounds to make things work cross-browser, I'm amazed at huge collective waste of productive hours that are put into this.

As I understand it, floats were never created for creating layouts, but because many layouts need a footer, that's how they're often being used. To clear the floats, you can add an empty div that clears both sides (div class="clear"). That is simple and works cross browser, but it adds "non-semantic" html rather than solving the presentation problem within the CSS.

I realize this, but after looking at all of the solutions with their benefits and drawbacks, it seems to make more sense to go with the empty div (predictable behavior across browsers), rather than create separate stylesheets, including various css hacks and workarounds, etc. which would also need to change as CSS evolves.

Is it o.k. to do this as long as you do understand what you're doing and why you're doing it? Or is it better to find the CSS workarounds, hacks and separate structure from presentation at all costs, even when the CSS presentation tools provided are not evolved to the point where they can handle such basic layout issues?