Would love advice from ULTRA HTML experts

Does it really matter wether or not I use DIV or SPAN? I am getting exactly the same outcome using both of them and pages are validating the same.

div is a block level element "container" and span is an inline element "container" ... what context are you using it in?

see here (http://www.w3.org/wiki/Generic_containers_-_the_div_and_span_elements) for reference

Positioning text and a replacement for single tables.
Figured I can just use <DIV></DIV> instead of <TABLE><TR><TD></TD></TR></TABLE>
The result is identical, hence my question.

Positioning text and a replacement for single tables.
Figured I can just use <DIV></DIV> instead of <TABLE><TR><TD></TD></TR></TABLE>
The result is identical, hence my question.

You should ALWAYS be using <div> instead of <table> unless you need to display columnar data. Tables for page layouts are outdated and discouraged.

Excellent! Thanks!

You can read more about why tables for layouts are bad (http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/).