Something that often seems to confuse people that are new to CSS-based layouts is the use of tables. I’ve seen plenty of cases where people interpret “avoid using tables for layout” as “don’t use tables at all”. It’s important to remember that tables are still perfectly fine to use – if used correctly.

Yes, do your best to avoid using tables for layout, but for tabular data, tables are what you should use. I’d like to talk about how tables should be used when marking up tabular data. There’s a lot more to tables in HTML and XHTML than just rows and cells. Much more. Especially if you want to make them accessible.

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