Web interfaces will give me a nervous breakdown !!

So spent a couple of hours wrestling with HTML & CSS. I know what I want it to look like, a nice auto expanding colour block to the right of the buttons saying "Active" or "Inactive" to show the schedule status, can I get it to auto expand ... nope ... tried IRC HTML, they booted me to IRC CSS and no joy there either. This is a pain. Web interfaces will give me a nervous breakdown !!