[sodapopcan]

You aren't wrong, but I don't think it was the case of not doing diligence. I welcomed CSS and started using it when it came out, though it was certainly painful back then (as siblings have pointed out) and I don't believe it would be a good faith argument to say otherwise. I was aware of `display: table-cell` but it always felt like a hack. I'm well of the irony in that statement, but if I'm going to call something a table cell, why not use a table? Regardless of how that sounds, that's how people think, especially 19 year old me! Furthermore, the name was far too technical. People who had little-to-no experience with table layout weren't going to search for "table" when wondering how to centre something.

In any event, the main reason I stuck with tables (and this of course was only in person projects) was because CSS didn't have a viable way to do layout until 2017. Semantics aside, I still view table layouts as superior to floats and clearfixes. I was terrible about thinking about accessibility back then, of course, so I'm not sure of the impact there.