Purists consider it controversial, but using tables for forms is fine in my opinion if it gets you the layout behavior you want. CSS and tables just don't offe

Purists consider it controversial, but using tables for forms is fine in my opinion if it gets you the layout behavior you want. CSS and tables just don't offer the same options when it comes to layout. There are only two big uses for tables that I would avoid, and which are probably how this all started: - Don't put all your content in giant tables for multiple columns, etc. Browsers do have to go to some effort to calculate column widths and such, and may delay rendering the contents of the table, e.g. until all the dependencies like inline images are loaded. - Don't try to use big hairy pixel-precise tables for freeform layout, like when designers would carve up a mock in Photoshop, export the "slices" as 14 different images, and reassemble them using tables. This is a maintainability and usability nightmare and will come back to bite you. People can get really dogmatic about not using tables. Perhaps you could find some forms you like and see what kind of mark-up they use.