Proper Use of Tables

When researching for this article, "The Proper Use Of Tables", it is very easy to find reasons why tables should NEVER be used. It seems that over the last few years designers and programmers have been misusing tables, using them for styling the graphical layout of the site, rather than using tables for their intended purposes. So many designers of late have taken a very negative attitude towards tables, and it seems we need reminding of the intended purpose of tables for the web.

The Improper Use of Tables

Tables are handy and easy to use to layout information that makes it easy to think of other ways tables could be used. In fact, inexperienced web designers will, and have been, tempted to use tables for the overall layout of the site. Why this is a "bad thing" to do comes back to mixing style with code. More and more designers and programmers are in agreement that design and code should remain separate. These reasons are discussed in the articles Standards and CSS Standards.