CSS positioning vs. table positioning

[downtroden]

I'm doing an online resume for myself, which i've completed. BUT! after getting it done, I visited the css-zen garden and said to myself... hey, if they can do that, surely i can too! So i'm in the process of redoing this site using only css to lay it out, no tables which brings me to my problem.

In the original site, i had two cells side by side, one for the thumb image(left) and one for the description and links (right). Beautiful, two columns, easy read... bravo! BUT!, now I've put myself into this css mess and don't know how i can get the same positioning? Can I make only one style that says something like...

image on left, text on right with a 25px margin inbetween the two?

also, what the 'display' do? I've played around with the values inline and block but don't really understand what's going on when I implement them?


thanks for any help.