I think it’s important that search engines to be able to find and understand my content (accessibility is also self-interest for me and my clients, with Google effectively being the king of disabled users and, using CSS properly, most of my SEO is already done). It’s also reassuring to my clients that their sites don’t break the law with regards disabled access, and that I’m not putting barriers in the way of disabled people’s freedom to use their site, rather than hanging up the web equivalent of a ‘no entry’ sign.

I like the fact that people can resize my pages in their browser, and the design doesn’t break.

You’re right, there are probably table-based designs that are difficult to reproduce in CSS (although the techniques in the book bring those a step closer). But then there are designs I could produce using a big, one-page JPEG file that you can’t reproduce using tables, and that’s not a reason to start using them either.

Personally, I also enjoy learning new techniques that I can use, as an intellectual challenge too. I like learning as an activity anyway.

Of course, you’re perfectly at liberty to continue the way you always have, and I’m sure you’re also perfectly happy with your reasons for doing so. I just think history would have been a lot different if there weren’t people who were challenging the status quo and looking for better ways to do things.

I will continue to use tables for layout, not only because they make perfect sense as a layout tool (unlike CSS), are easy and intuitive to use, accomplish designs that CSS simply can not (let me repeat that CAN NOT), and I do not what a code-ist religiion that impoverishes design, but simply for spite.

And more, I’d be delighted to kick every W3 pithead in the butt-hole that ever said laid down this “recommendation” and frankly derive immense personal gratification from stangling with me own hands every a-hole who has sought to turn this “recommendation” into the 11th Commandment.

the article at digital point used but it could have been and we’d still be able to use css to say it is a cell, or later use it as just a plain old div belong to our fruit class.

we don’t have to use cell, row, etc as the name of the class
in the divs, but a or will always act like a cell or row in html, we’d have to edit the html to affect how they behave, using divs to build a tabular layout lets you control how they are styled in an external css file – so today they might be used as a table but tomorrow you could remove the table formatting from the css class without having to update your html code.

so i think it is a step forward, but i doubt it will be adopted until microsoft gets rid of ie6 and ie7, since we can handle all browsers now using regular divs.

hope this post makes sense

Completely agree with Andy Clarke’s approach as well. After reading his book it totally transformed the way I look at setting things up from an HTML perspective.

Unfortunately, certain limitations with CSS across the various browsers encourages people to just add the extra markup to make their lives easier.

Justifiable or not, it’s just the way it is.

Reading over the comments i noticed a common theme, although where talking about the use of css, divs and tables and how best to use them, the bottom line seems to be about readability and maintainance.

If a document is indented as metioned and well commmented then readability and maintenance shouldnt be a proble.

good indentation and commenting may not solve the problem/possibility that u may have to change large chunks of code to update the site but good indentation and commenting regardless of what methods you use should still simplify readability and maintenance

i tend to adopt the software desgn approach even when designing websites/pages by first creating a PDL (program design language) which gives me a perfect template for commenting and organising my code for easy readability and maintenance.

@Stephen:
Your suggestion would work and still maintain semantics; however, my question was how to layout the provided markup, not whether or not it was correct. I noted in my original comment that I’ve done that layout without CSS tables, but I am curious if it can be done with them.

I guess my point in all this is that I don’t know that CSS tables will really be all that revolutionary. Sure, if your markup plays nice with CSS table-based layouts, then you have a much more direct and easy implementation ahead of you. Should you force your HTML to play nice with CSS tables? I don’t think so. I would agree with watershed and Andy Clarke that markup comes first, then the layout, which also agrees with Garison’s comments (even though I was misquoted).

Put simply, CSS tables is a shortcut to clean grid-based design if your markup works with it naturally. Forcing markup to fit a layout scheme is just wrong.

veg0matic Says:

Whenever I’m analyzing someone else’s HTML (or Javascript or Perl), the first thing I do is re-indent everything. If some divs or other elements aren’t closed, the indentation gives you a clue which ones.

Web design layouts are based on a grid structure and in order to display them we are currently being forced to use less than ideal methods to do so (namely floating). A grid can be much more sensibly laid out using the mental model of a table. Using CSS to do this means that we can do it by making a pseudo table without ever needing to affect the user or the html code.

As I understand it, all “table” elements which are not specifically stated in the CSS are implied which means that if I describe a <div> as a table-cell in the CSS then the row and table elements are assumed to surround it, even if there are no surrounding <div>s. Therefore, no extra markup needs to be added.

The fact that IE is preventing us from using this technique is a major drawback so we will have to bide our time somewhat, but in the meantime, we can arm ourselves ready to make our lives easier as soon as IE8 falls into common use. (and works like it’s supposed to!)