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Comment by adamtj | Hacker News Reader

Are html-tables bad even for their intended purpose of laying out tabular data?

No.

And again, that's part of the point; "HTML table tags aren't good for layout" semantically collapsed[1] to "tables aren't good for layout" collapsed to "tables are bad" collapsed to "tables are EVIL". No, they aren't. The first collapse is easily explained by the fact that for a long time HTML table tags bidirectionally implied table layout (no way to have one without the other), but now that CSS has broken that in both directions it's not a valid simplification.

(Less well known aspect of CSS table support, I'm pretty sure it's possible to take a series of HTML table elements and "undo" their tableness if you're feeling feisty. But it's a weird way to do things.)

[1]: I seem to recall there's a term for what I'm reaching for. Much obliged if someone can remind me.

>"for a long time HTML table tags bidirectionally implied table layout" //

You're right, tables are fine for tabular data. But it was always thus.

Perhaps if you were a html noob and hung out listening to people pissed off with table layouts you'd get confused and think all tables were bad (you definitely want a graphical layout helper app though as keeping track of them in code is a PITA).

It was

    table tage |- table layout V tabulated data

rather than just

    table tage |- table layout

I've worked on HTML that was written by someone who cargo culted all of the tables into rows of Bootstrap columns, for tabular data. It happens.

"I seem to recall there's a term for what I'm reaching for." Conflated?

Specifically, a complicated concept getting simplified to a simpler concept that is easier to spread around culturally. Complicated treatises on when tables are and are not valid are much harder to spread around than "Tables are EVIL!", so the latter has a significant memetic propagation advantage.

The fact that nobody has popped up so far suggests that I may be wrong about an existing term. I'd really have expected a LessWronger or something to speak up by now.

Well with the world moving towards mobile display compatibility people are generally depreciating tables in favor of grid-systems via CSS because they are more customizable for formatting tables intelligibly on smaller displays. Tables don't collapse or reformat properly on small screen and what you'll get is usually multiple columns with one letter on each line while grid-systems can stack columns making it both more legible and organized. CSS grid-systems of course require more work but you can generally find them already integrated into frameworks like bootstrap. Even still if you have complex table formats it'll require more customized situational grids than generalized grid-systems but in most cases bootstrap grids works fine. However I have had times when I have tables with minimum copy and mostly icons so we opted for tables because even on small displays it collapsed just fine as opposed to grids which left a lot of empty space.

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