[lwhi]

Up until CSS was a viable thing, people built websites in a very different way to our modern approach.

In order to get things to line up, everything was put in a table with invisible borders. If there was a gap, a transparent spacer.gif image was used to plug it.

A lot of people liked this way because it was easy to understand, and they were used to it .. but we were effectively hacking the main semantic purpose of a table element to use it for layout ...

.. also there was no separation between the presentation and content layers.

CSS Zen Gardens signalled a turning point, and was designed to help show the power provided by CSS.

[laumars]

That doesn’t answer the question though. I doubt many developers would be in favour of using tables for layout over divs. however the same doesn’t apply for why one must use divs for tables (ie actual tabulated data) instead of tables.

[lwhi]

I think you're confused. We use tables for tabulated data.

CSS gardens was created specifically to stop people from using tables for layout.

[laumars]

There’s plenty of comments in this discussion from developers saying they specifically don’t use <table> even for tabulated data.

[lwhi]

I've never met a professional frontend developer who does that.

CSS Zen Gardens is from around 2006.

[laumars]

Yet there are comments here advocating that. I’m not saying it’s typical, I’m just saying why it’s dumb.

I know when Zen Gardens was released. That fuck all to do with the discussion though.

And can you please limit your replies to one thread rather than spamming the same comments on multiple threads.

[lwhi]

The discussion is actually _about_ Zen Gardens.

You chime in with a point that's not actually related to what I was talking about.

I let you know.

You get annoyed.

I think you need to simmer down.