> Tabular markup for non-tabulated data is not rational & semantic markup is certainly not irrational. Aren't you talking past each other? The issue is that w

> Tabular markup for non-tabulated data is not rational & semantic markup is certainly not irrational. Aren't you talking past each other? The issue is that with initial versions of CSS, replicating the powerful layout possibilities of tabular markup was not possible. Developers generally built layouts using "float" instead, and had trouble replicating some of the standard table features like keeping columns the same height. Only with full CSS 2.1 implementation in IE8 did this state of affairs change, at that point you could apply rules like "display: table" to DIVs and get the same layout possibilities without using tables. Flexbox, on the other hand, is actually an improvement (are are Grid Layout and Template Layout Modules). But it didn't come until after CSS 2.1.