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Comment by Aeolun | Hacker News Reader

There is no chance in hell that you’d get the general web to move back to floating divs to manage layout.

No problem, you don't need that. Just use tables.

No just css grid, that's all we ever wanted ;=)

(But honestly tables suck bad time, I did wrote some table base hobby website back in 2009? or so and it wasn't nice (the experience, not the website which was quite fine). Sure basing a GUI on a grid is the best thing to do in many cases but tables are no grids. Grids are more flexible.)

Not sure if you’re joking, because CSS Grid does provide 99% of my layout needs.

(or it would if 5% of my users weren’t still using IE11, but that’s another story.)

The biggest problem with tables was that they worked.

Except if you need to support different device sizes and dynamic layout.

I’m not defending table based layout but in fairness different device sizes was less of an issue back then because almost all browsing was done on a PC or Mac and thus dynamic layout wasn't even something you needed to considerate.

Well, my point was more that it’s not a great option today.

You’re right, back in the day when everyone’s screen sizes were somewhat consistent, it worked, though still had many quirks.

> different device sizes was less of an issue back then because almost all browsing was done on a PC or Mac and thus dynamic layout wasn't even something you needed to considerate.

It saddens me when Web sites assume they are in a full-screen window :(

Impressive that you remembered having two sets of nested parentheses going by the end of your comment and closed them correctly. Perhaps that's part of the problem...

I’m sure if we still had to use tables someone would have built a React wrapper by now.

Tables should be used for data, not for layout.

This is true, <table> elements are for tabular data. But look at almost any web layout, and you will notice things are in a table layout most of the time. Even flexbox conceptualizes the flow of children as flex-direction: row/column. I think tabular concepts like rows and columns just make sense to humans making websites, and our 2D x/y axis conditioning.

The real issue with using <table> is semanticism, breaking DOM flow (sometimes creates issues for screen readers), and separation of concerns wrt data and style like you mentioned. Also, <table>s are hard to style over, like wtf is display: table-cell? Nobody seems to know.

But the number of times I see a colleague or fellow frontend cretin re-creating a tabular interface with a bunch of <div class="row"> etc... or wondering how to dynamically size the nested columns to fit the largest cell, I remind them: just use a table. Please.

You might notice that Hacker News layout uses <table>.

All I can say is whatever, man. The semantic web and all the RDF tuple goodness we were supposed to get is mostly a dead dream. Make whatever works for your users. Accept that things aren't going to be pure and perfect. If tables gets me to where I need to be, then that's what I'll use. Worked 20 years ago, works now, will work 20 years from now too.

I can't imagine any actual web designer wanting to trade flexbox/grid for tables.

What if I told you that there are people who make "web applications" that aren't beautiful or "designer" quality?

Good for them - but a browser which only cater to them is not going to be successful.

I never really understood what people have against float. I think it works fine for most use cases and is not to difficult.

Now table layouts where quite a pain because they got very complex very fast. Flexbox and Grid are fine I guess, but I always found them a bit harder to understand than float and did not so much they offered that I needed.

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