Hacker News Reader

Html tables are very different from excel tables. Fundamentally html tables were used because rows are a good way to split up the page vertically (you could have one row for the header, one for the content one for the footer). And columns are good for splitting it up horizontally (you could have one column for the side panel, and one for the content, and the last one for an obnoxious blinking ad).

I still love using tables in 2025 for webapps designed to run on old browsers. It's easy to render data into them (it's just headers, rows, columns) and they automatically have a cool, functional look (IMO).

Div tags were widely spread by 2010, though.

We were pretty far past the era of falling back to tables by that point.

Also 1x1 pixel spacer GIFs.

IE6 forced us to do crazy stupid stuff, like <div> </div> - and don't even start talking about