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The display:table css properties are exactly equivalent to the display model of html tables. They were specified in CSS2 which became a recommendation in 1998,

by olavk 11y ago

The display:table css properties are exactly equivalent to the display model of html tables. They were specified in CSS2 which became a recommendation in 1998, which is 17 years ago (!). But due to the IE6 dominance and abandonment it took many years before this part of css was broadly supported by browsers, so developers had to either use html tables (even when not semantically appropriate) or use hacks like floats (which was not designed for this) to achieve a table-like layout. So the age of hack was due to browsers not supporting css, not to to deficiencies in css as such. That said, html tables never displayed identically across browsers before css. There were lots of corner cases e.g. with the interaction of fixed and flexible columns. Which is not really surprising since the display model for tables were never specified in the first place before css.

nikatwork 11y ago
> display:table The delicious irony is that CSS had to emulate the old table model to overcome its default layout deficiencies. And IIRC it still can't natively handle mixing relative and fixed widths, and consistent vertical centering. > html tables never displayed identically My bread and butter used to be slicing photoshop comps into websites. My table layouts were pixel perfect on every browser without hacks. I do agree there were a few things that had to be accomodated using   and spacer gifs - but it was painless compared to elaborate and fragile CSS hacks. I shouldn't still care about this stuff - I moved to IOS dev thank goodness - but I still nuture a burning hatred of CSS years later :)
- olavk 11y ago
  There is no irony. CSS replicate the table layout model in order allow you to separate markup from presentation but still be able to show tables. Otherwise, how should the default style sheet for table-elements look? CSS obviously needed to to have at least the same presentational power as presentational HTML to be backwards compatible.

by olavk 11y ago

nikatwork 11y ago

> display:table The delicious irony is that CSS had to emulate the old table model to overcome its default layout deficiencies. And IIRC it still can't natively handle mixing relative and fixed widths, and consistent vertical centering. > html tables never displayed identically My bread and butter used to be slicing photoshop comps into websites. My table layouts were pixel perfect on every browser without hacks. I do agree there were a few things that had to be accomodated using   and spacer gifs - but it was painless compared to elaborate and fragile CSS hacks. I shouldn't still care about this stuff - I moved to IOS dev thank goodness - but I still nuture a burning hatred of CSS years later :)

olavk 11y ago
There is no irony. CSS replicate the table layout model in order allow you to separate markup from presentation but still be able to show tables. Otherwise, how should the default style sheet for table-elements look? CSS obviously needed to to have at least the same presentational power as presentational HTML to be backwards compatible.