[frik]

Looking at the CSS Grid examples, I am not sure why? Tables and Divs with reflow can do the same, but with more predictable outcome and less boilerplate.

How about optimising the existing render-paths even more in Blink/Webkit/Gecko instead requiring us to wrap the head around new-but-old things to make it easier for you (the engine devs). Or who else thought it's a good idea to invent yet another syntax. There was a lot of unfounded hate against Tables for the last 15 years, but as we all learned out, Tables have there place.

[ry_ry]

Tables absolutely have their place... for rendering tabular data!

The idea that tables are "bad" was always semantic FUD, but i like to think we're pretty much over that these days and the fact remains that they're far from ideal for responsive page-level layout and we now have a far more powerful (and meaningful!) toolbox to pick from. The CSS display-table techniques were at best a hack, disguising the presence tables in the markup, but they were still there at an abstract level in all their tabley glory.

The stuff you can do with a handful of lines of flexbox/grid blow a conventional table layout away at the expense of a steeper learning curve. They're honestly worth the effort.