[ue_]

Why must a table be used in such a way, only for tabular data? Sorry if I seem obtuse, but I don't really see the purpose behind semantic elements. Tables were fine for layout with much fewer things that you needed to get right. Wikipedia still uses tables for the layout on the Main Page, for example.

I don't think there is any 'meaning' in the tags that we use, and any meaning implied there is invented as a way to try and match concepts on the screen to things we recognise in real life. I can mean the same thing to a user using tables, because they don't know that it's a table. Can I put a comment like "This table is for layout"? That would also convey meaning, and be a lot easier than messing around with CSS layout.

After a while of trying to get CSS to work with table-like layout, I think I'm going to move back to just using tables in future. At least, until something better than CSS+HTML comes along.

[oliwarner]

As a developer who somehow survived the times of frame, imagemap, and table-based layouts, I can promise you, they all had their own issues. Well before semantics, developers and designers needed CSS just to make things possible.

But you're focussing on people and healthy ones at that. Semantics matter a lot less there because you can style anything to look like anything else. But somebody with a screen reader literally needs semantics for accessibility. You set your page up as a table and their screen reader is going to iterate through it like a table.

And things like microformats are soft-semantics that allow your devices to explicitly know that "this thing here is an address", "that's a phone number you can click", and there's a whole bunch of formats for declaring embed data rather than making a service infer it from your actual content.

But if you just can't be bothered, do yourself and your users a favour. Use a framework (eg Bootstrap). It won't be perfect but it'll stop you using tables for layout and that's already a lot better. I can't believe it won't also look better.

[keithjgrant]

HTML is not just about putting text on a screen. It is markup; the tags and attributes imply meaning about the contents they contain.

This makes it not only usable by a web browser, but parsable by software. That includes, but is certainly not limited to, screen readers, assistive technologies, and search engines.

Consider an example where I use JavaScript to make <i> tags behave like links. I can make it “work”, but by doing so, I am disregarding—and breaking—a primary function of the language.