Perhaps a bit OT of TFA, but on the general topic: Were HTML 'tables' so widely and badly used and were they so corrupted as a term that the W3C had to create '

Perhaps a bit OT of TFA, but on the general topic: Were HTML 'tables' so widely and badly used and were they so corrupted as a term that the W3C had to create 'grids'? Is this kind of just an upgrade to tables?: http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-grid-align/ http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-grid-align/ How is a grid different than a table? I find it odd that that each element in the grid is explicitly positioned (e.g. #score { grid-column: 1; grid-row: 3 } ). It seems as though we've been round and round on this topic and I feel as though we're going to go round again some more when we could be improving the core elements (at the risk of some breakage). EDIT: some answers to my questions here: http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/css/css3-preview-tables-and-grids.html http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/css/css3-preview-tables-an... EDIT2: looks as though multiple client sizes are a driver.