There are still things tables can do for layout that pure CSS simply can’t handle. For these instances I use javascript (It’s acceptable now, right?).

R.I.P. Spacer GIF.

Greg Johnson’s last blog post..The WordPress.org theme directory sucks

The shame!

But after working with CSS for so long there’s no way I would ever layout something with a table again. It’s faster to write, more flexible, yada yada. You listed the reasons above.

As for hacks, if you work with CSS long enough you learn how to code everything to avoid using hacks. At the worst I have to implement maybe three little hacks, it’s not a big deal.

But there can be a great deal of snobbery in the CSS-only camp, which is why this post made me laugh so much.

Frankly my impression of CSS advocates used to be someone who turned in work late and over-budget while waxing philosophically about how it would somehow be easier to update later (and yes their updates were also late and over-budget). It was only when I found Firebug, that I finally saw how developing pure CSS layout could be faster.

I don’t feel CSS breaks very elegantly. For example it’s easier to tell that a row is too wide, when the row actually becomes too wide(rather than dropping an element down and pushing other elements around the page).

I work a very intelligent group of programmers. Occasionally they are tasked to do some minimal layout when I am busy and they struggle mightily with the simplest of CSS bugs.

Now that CSS has won the war, I hope we can start focusing on why it still isn’t optimal instead of becoming defensive and arguing about tables for non-tabular data.