HTML Table
Out of context: Reply #27
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- rafalski0
Here we go for the 1345th time!
Moth, you're right that many people in the industry and actually in this thread don't seem to understand the value of presentation/content separation, semantic markup and all the good that comes with CSS.
This doesn't change the fact, that CSS has very annoying flaws in its design and the giant step forward it is, it is a bit of a step back as well. This could've been avoided. Easily.
Probably the main reason is the way it emerged - not by evolution and real life testing, but from drawing boards of a group of nerds.
It wasn't a gradual process of real life checks. Well, at least there wasn't enough of such process.
Real world, real browser evolution was seen ie. in browsers' 'quirksmode' rendering which was browsers' makers direct answer to developers' needs. These hints were neglected by CSS err.. fathers, who went exactly in the opposite direction.
As for tables for layout, they were good in the way they worked, even if a mess structure/code wise. They weren't replaced by a good similar tool ('display: table' is stupidly overcomplicated and doesn't fully duplicate table behaviour).
There wouldn't be this discussion, or the thousands before this one had CSS not been flawed like that.
CSS is good, only sloppily designed.