hp, that drives me nuts too ....
in defense of designers though, most of us are trained to work in photoshop or a graphics program ... and few designers now have had any training on desktop publishing programs which allow you to see a 'page' as opposed to a graphic.
I find often if I want to design a flyer or something for print, I have to go into photoshop and whip it up to 'see' it before I can reconstruct it in a vector based program - and I trained originally as a print designer!!
its mostly laziness ... since imageready launched with the last version of photoshop, few designers even bother editing the page to add text to the graphics.
I have a way now to merge my laziness with my practical knowledge of how a web page should be built ... big graphic on the top, text/tables at the bottom LOL
http://www.giantvegas.com/ladies_night.html