The topic is now at least decade old: “Never ever use HTML tables, especially for formatting purposes. You do everything in CSS”. The main reasons given are delays in page loading, incompatible or deprecated tags and the basic mistake of using something for formatting while it was dedicated to a different purpose. Kyusl.com is using a mixed style – both tables and CSS. CSS is used for positioning normally where tables really can’t do. Here’s why: since I am in no way an HTML or CSS expert like those folks on the Net advocating CSS, I had to run Google before doing many formatting tasks. The impression you get is that with anything beyond simple positioning, the page can easily go to hell. When you filter out the search results generated by HTML snippets of CSS machos (look! yet another way to do XYZ in CSS!), you start browsing some real life code, dealing with poor CSS support in general, with different levels of support in different browsers and with most unwanted limitations. Most of code that I tried to get rounded corners for page elements broke so easily that I have given up on the second evening, drawn those corners in Gimp and did everything using tables (just as many well-known Internet sites do). Then, after having fought off numerous smaller problems (okay, beginner problems! but aren’t new technologies supposed to be little bit more straightforward?), Internet Explorer hit me with the lack of support of “min-weight” property. Sure, it sounds childish, but aren’t those things simple and isn’t CSS a mature technology? I hope things will be getting easier – the new CSS promises the rounded corners for lazy types like me! But for now, shouldn’t HTML tables get some deserved tolerance?
