"CSS could have used a table-like layout model that makes it easy to arrange <div>s into rows and columns, allowing a smooth upgrade from people who were using the <table> tag."
A lot like that, yes, but that was not introduced until CSS2 which is so big and complex that they've spent almost 15 years correcting it (CSS 2.1 keeps bouncing back and forth between "Working Draft" and "Candidate Recommendation").
Despite being first defined in CSS2 (1998) CSS tables were not supported in IE for 10 years (IE8, 2009), and while some of the blame for this is surely Microsoft's, with a standard as big and complex as CSS it's hard to expect implementations to get it right for a long time.
To avoid this disaster CSS3 is "modular" and currently has over 40 modules defined! This is madness. The more complicated things get, the more difficult it is to bring the web to new devices or to innovate in the browser space.
CSS1 was deliberately designed to be 'simple' which is why they avoided the problem of layout entirely. Appendix E of the specification even says so (http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS1/#appendix-e).
Good to know -- though in that case, it seems inappropriate that web standards advocates were demanding everyone abandon table-based layouts when CSS did not actually support layout yet.
Despite being first defined in CSS2 (1998) CSS tables were not supported in IE for 10 years (IE8, 2009), and while some of the blame for this is surely Microsoft's, with a standard as big and complex as CSS it's hard to expect implementations to get it right for a long time.
To avoid this disaster CSS3 is "modular" and currently has over 40 modules defined! This is madness. The more complicated things get, the more difficult it is to bring the web to new devices or to innovate in the browser space.