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Comment by smrtinsert | Hacker News Reader

Well, more specifically table-based design. It Just Works (tm).

In some places, table-based designs are apparently still hip, and I come across few for localization. Gives me huge facepalm dealing with them...

you are posting on a table based design right now

Websites and companies we like are exempt from "you're doing it wrong" comments.

Since when?

Since sarcasm was invented.

At least it is for the contents that somewhat makes it understandable, being it's mostly listing of data.

What I'm talking about is table layout being used for the sole purpose of aesthetic reasons. And those I've seen so many of those sites using bad design decisions every corner (texts embedded entirely as a graphic, etc.) and they are usually one speaks out their concern about SEO...

Tables are honestly just more convenient than CSS hacks sometimes. In this case, by hacks I mean when the feeling becomes clear that you're spending more time bending CSS to do what you wanted to do with a table than the time it would've taken to maintain a table.

That's not exactly disproving his point.

Sometimes these are the result of hours of facepalming as well. And in IE7 that's just the way you do it (no display:table or table-cell supported)

Table-based layouts are indispensable for HTML emails. But then.. Outlook still uses the MS-Word rendering engine from 2007 (basically).

Unless you're blind, or trying to render the page on a different-sized browser and the tables are fixed size (because 640x480 is a Law Of Physics).

I've never understood the argument that "semantic" tags are easier to render for screenreaders. Like a screenreader knows that <em> is for emphasis, but couldn't possibly render <i> the same way it renders <em>. Or knows that a <div> must be for layout but couldn't possibly treat <table> the same way (modern UI toolkits build tables out of divs, so it's not like div-users semantically distinguish between layout and actual tabular data).

It's not the tags themselves that are "semantic" but how they are used. The semantic web is a content-first approach, as opposed to using tags to design the structure of your page. If you're adding div's to create a specific layout, you're doing it wrong.

That said, I think that CSS is inadequate for the task of controlling the layout of elements so there are very few truly "semantic" layouts.

It's the same problem as deciding whether an API is RESTful enough or not. Eventually, pragmatism wins over dogma. Still, I think (like REST) the semantic web is a good ideal to shoot for.

>knows that a <div> must be for layout but couldn't possibly treat <table> the same way //

How then would you treat actual tables, like <table noreally="true"><tr><th> ... ?

Screenreaders treat tables differently because they carry semantic weight - table headings, rows and such relate to one another in a way that mere areas of a web-page do not.

It's not the table tag that's bad, people don't [shouldn't!] use divs for marking up tabular data.

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