CSS Tables Are Not a Solution

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Chris Coyier on

Eric Meyer said today in “Wanted: Layout System“:

Turning a bunch of divs or list items or whatever into table-role boxes is no better than just using table markup in the first place, and it’s arguably worse. Using element names other than table and td to create layout tables, and then claiming it’s not using tables for layout, borders on self-deception.

Not to mention doing things that way means you’re doing your layout in a highly source-order-dependent fashion, which was one of the things about table layout we were trying to get away from in the first place.

Amen, brother. I’ve heard enough about these CSS tables. This “Everything You Know About CSS is Wrong” stuff is absolutely insane to me. I was feeling a bit dense about it before, so it’s nice to hear it from Eric.