[tshaddox]

It's not always only about custom theming. There is a ton of functionality that is simply lacking in web standards. If you want default behavior, feel free to use an unstyled or minimally styled <table> element. But it's not going to have any live searching or filtering, the ability to handle enormous numbers of rows and columns (as can be done with virtualization in JavaScript), draggable rows and columns, resizable columns, etc. Sure, it's fair to say "too bad, I don't care about those features anyway" or "too bad, no one gets to use those features on the web until web standards and browsers decide to implement them," but I don't think that's a useful attitude.

[nitrogen]

So do all those things once, in the browser, and then every table can have them. That's maximally useful.

[pwinnski]

Define "those things," and then tell me what "those things" would be defined at before, say, live search came along. Because however you would have defined search boxes would not have allowed for the development of live search.

Iteration is what brings us progress that we enjoy, while also bringing with it the headache of reinventing the wheel over and over again. Both go hand in hand.

[tshaddox]

I’m not sure what you mean though. Just don’t allow anyone to develop their own table component after the first one was developed?

[5560675260]

Standards and browsers are already so bloated, that it's virtually impossible to create a new implementation.