[pjc50]

I can't upvote this enough. Web 1.0 was "responsive" in that text reflowed and you could layout tables to keep things roughly positioned relative to each other. But everyone in the design community had just got used to desktop publishing and tried to replicate that, frequently with horrible results.

[wavefunction]

well, other than a table cell can't drop down below the previous elements of its row if the viewport width shrinks past certain points.

What I mean is that tables are not "responsive" and laying things out with tables, while "easy" was not enough for anything more than people browsing the web on CRTs, and certainly not for thousands of different displays with varying dimensions and resolutions.

Things are good these days. You can still use tables if that's as far as you want to go, or you can do things professionally.

[digitalengineer]

This is very funny if you think of it. "Responsive" uses columns (like the 960.gs grid). Column-based designs have been around in old school print for centuries.