Finally! Sense and tables

I don’t do much work with CSS. Every time I do I have to rack my brain to remember what I learnt last time. But I have picked up enough to have heard “tables are bad” more than is healthy. This has always frustrated me, because CSS layout may be elegant, but it is hard.

Finally, today when listening to an old interview with Eric Meyer on Think Vitamin, I heard someone speak some sense.  To paraphrase Mr Meyer, it was along the lines of: “Sometimes you should be practical, save some time and use a table.  Sure, style everything inside the table appropriately, but its not worth spending a whole day with a CSS layout when you could have done the basic layout in one minute with a table.” Bravo, I’m all for the pragmatic approach.