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Why I am OK with Tables

By Cyberian Muse on Tuesday, July 06, 2010 at 9:09 AM.

One of the other folks alpha testing the new Scripting2 software, Megan Taylor, has a post up today titled "Why I hate Tables." To test out the newest version of Scripting2, which Dave has been hard at work updating all holiday weekend, I thought I would write a response post. 

I don't really mind Tables. I enjoy symmetry. If you're building a website with a symmetrical appearance, tables are a pretty logical tool to use. I think it makes sense a lot of times to use them to group certain elements of a page, at least for my design purposes. But then again, I am not really a designer. I didn't learn HTML until I was 21. I "built" websites when I was younger (not 10, but maybe like 14 or so), but I always used tools on the Web to do it. There's a pretty horrid Tripod.com site cached somewhere out there that would probably make the lot of you cringe before bursting out laughing. This isn't really helping my case against tables, but the point is, I am a self-taught HTML writer. I pretty much learned on demand from working with Movable Type, and went through the W3Schools lessons in their entirety. For very simple displays, tables get the job done. That's not to say there aren't better ways to do that same job, but they don't anger me. 

I have seen that response quite often though, and imagine it's the same sort of response I have when I see people using Yahoo Mail or Internet Explorer.