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At this time it was a perfectly example of why CSS specialists and developers forced into using CSS were talking past each other. The purists insulted table lay

At this time it was a perfectly example of why CSS specialists and developers forced into using CSS were talking past each other. The purists insulted table layouts with good reason, but the best they could offer was crazy tricks with floats that made semantically as little sense as tables. Now that CSS grid is finally useable both sides can agree on a proper answer, but this is 20 years later. That's the thing about purists, they're not wrong in pointing out the problems, but they're often so obsessed with the problems they fail to critically evaluate the alternative solutions and realize they are also terrible.

jandrese 5y ago
This exactly. CSS proponents were badmouthing tables left and right, but tables excelled at the kind of layouts that CSS struggled with. Reactive three column website with tables? Super easy. Reactive three column layout with CSS? Requires a human sacrifice and won't work in half of the browsers of the time. Want the text centered in the column headings? In tables it was a built in feature. With CSS, well, I hope you like pain. These weren't obscure problems either. Many websites were already in a 3 column layout because it was so natural with tables, so converting them over to CSS was an immediate pain point. That said, if you wanted to do something more complicated then tables could fall apart pretty quickly whereas CSS had a solution. Adding columns to a table when someone expanded their window and reflowing the content into the new columns was basically not possible with tables, but is something CSS can handle for example. Most people only had simple problems though and CSS complicated their life considerably.