The CSS3 Anthology, 4th Edition

Chapter 5 Tabular Data

You’ve probably heard the mantra “tables are for tabular data, not layout.” Originally designed to display tabular data correctly in HTML documents, they were soon misappropriated as a way to lay out web pages. Back then, understanding how to create complex layouts using nested tables was a part of the standard skill set of every web designer. Yet using tables in this way requires large amounts of markup, making a website increasingly complex and difficult to maintain, as well as causing pages to load slowly. This method also creates problems for users who are trying to access content using screen readers or other text-only devices. Since then, the Web Standards movement has pushed for the replacement of tabular ...