I deal with a design company quite often. I've been trying to convince the designer for quite awhile now that he should switch to using CSS for layout, He currently uses dreamweaver and photoshop, and just slices the design up however he sees fit, this leaves for a lot of embedded tables, and makes it really hard to work with and integrate programming into. (also anytime he makes a change if the programming is outside of the dreamweaver template it gets whacked). The designer is pretty stubborn though and thinks the way they do it is fine, and doesn't want to take the time to learn CSS. I'd do the design myself if I was graphically inclined, but I'm not. Any ideas on how to show them the benefits of using CSS over depreciated tags?

Any ideas on how to show them the benefits of using CSS over depreciated tags?Yep - charge them more for the additional time it takes to integrate your programming with their crap.

Then, explain to them that they're a breath away from becoming obsolete. There will be enough work for them now coming from people who don't know the difference, but when the market for shoddy engineering dries up (and it has been for the past few years), it'll be too late to play catch-up.

I'm not entirely certain how a designer/developer can believe a field as technical as Web design isn't going to evolve and move forward with or without them, but they need to wake up quickly!

Eh, there view is, as long as it looks good, who cares how complex it is. O.o I mean some of their sites have tables nested 5-6 levels deep... (They don't even use ColSpan and RowSpan, just another table)

Yup,
The Customer is ALWAYS right, You are the customer,
just go elsewhere if they don't want your custom.
It's not your job to convince them of anything, it's there job to provide you with what you want, or to say you need to look elsewhere.

Eh, there view is, as long as it looks good, who cares how complex it is. O.o I mean some of their sites have tables nested 5-6 levels deep... (They don't even use ColSpan and RowSpan, just another table)Can you share a sample of what you're talking about? You can get a good sense for the exact software they're using (down to the version) and the relative time period from which their skills developed based on some of the nuances within their markup. You can share privately if you'd like :)

Yup,
The Customer is ALWAYS right, You are the customerI get the impression he's doing programming work with them for other customers as a contractor. Is that right?

Teh are you sourcing the work to them or are they supplying you.? if you are sourcing them then if I was you I would find another company to work with. Why should you have to double your workload to make up for there so called website coding, sounds as though they are'nt even coding it at all, but just giving out default machine code soup. Obviously these guys are not interested or educated in proper web coding practice and seems as though they don't care either.

@Brian-de-vie
Most of the work is subcontracted to us, they typically bring in the work then feed us the programming. (sometimes it's the other way around, we bring in the work and feed them the design.) so we aren't exactly customers, and thats true to a point, the customer is always right... except when they are wrong. I honestly have no say in how they deliver the design to me, other then complaining that it's a pain to work with because it's their customers, and their customers don't care as long as it looks pretty.

@the_pm
I will send you some examples later via PM

@killapix
yes I know for a fact that they follow the "If it can't be done in dreamweaver, it can't be done" philosophy. I'm pretty fluent in CSS myself, and we've even offered to teach a class for them on CSS, which they seemed interested in, then never followed up (been 2 years)