So what are your opinion on tables?

Trying to start a war, mate? 

But, seriously, tables are excellent for displaying tabular data. And, if you use the full capabilities (such as SUMMARY, CAPTION, HEADERS, COLGROUP etc), they can make very complicated data more accessible for everyone

Tables for layout almost always has more negatives associated than positives. The only thing I use them for is User-Agents with poor support of CSS. And these days, that basically just means email clients

If I have to build HTML email, then table layouts and inline styles are the only way to get a semblance of design across all major clients these days

Their horrible evil acursed things! Unless like Lachlan says your doing a table....but even then they confuse me!

Tables are for tabular data, not for layouts and that's it!

+1

Tables do not allow for the dynamic of today's web, which is more than just document layout.  The original intent of HTML was to provide a document format, but the web has become the user's desktop, which requires a great deal more flexibility.  DHTML and AJAX are here to stay, and using tables is going to lock your web pages into a nightmare static layout the you'll have to reprogram your way out of the next time you want to change the content.

Tables ARE useful.  For tabular data.  In fact, 508 accessibility to tabular data relies on table tags.  So there is definitely a place for them, but layout is certainly not their main purpose.

If you have to have something absolutely universal, tables are the only way to go. But in todays world we really only have to worry about a few browsers to be compatible with. They just need to hurry up and get everything to one standard so we dont have to worry about "cross browser compatibility"

quakersqares - "They just need to hurry up and get everything to one standard so we dont have to worry about "cross browser compatibility"

That's the problem, IE developers aren't willing to follow standards. 

Let's make it clear that he meant to say Microsoft's IE Software Team developers....

Hi,

every once in a wile i get to read about the devil tables and how it's much better with css and everything...the point is that for e-mail marketing there is no other option (that I know) and for tabular data it's also perfect. Now I have to agree with you all, tables for layout is not a good idea at all.. But then again, the browsers css compatibility is so problematic that sometimes it makes me want to use a table...

That's what we mean, table for layouts is bad. Email is an exception.

 Outlook 2007 is particularily bad in that it now uses Word's html render, not IE's. So it now drops support for a lot of CSS. Things like background-image no longer display in Outlook 2007.. just something to be wary of!

Thanks for letting us know that. I do alot of HTML emails inside my company but hopefully we are still working with outlook 2003.

There is an interesting pdf made by the guys at mailchimp.com

here the link to the page: http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/gen_email_design.phtml

and here the link to the pdf: http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/html_email_design.pdf

Realy interesting to read.

I have to agree with everyone... Tables always have... sucked. CSS is a much better layout utility.

Definitely have to agree that css is better, not just for cross platform compatability, but also for additioinal media devices (pda's, mobiles etc).... Although, I really wish there was a standard as I feel like sometimes it is an uphill battle that I'm never going to win!

There is a popular link on Digg about Tableless forms. Pretty cool.

Link is down at the moment but should come back (when the digg effect will stop...).

I came to the game a little late, around 2002, so I never had to depend on tables and never felt the joy of the endless nested tables. The folks who survived that era have my endless respect as I could have never thought that one through.

 Nevertheless, I see little harm in one big table just to once and for all keep the left stuff on the left and the right stuff completely over there. I do tend to think in CSS and my latest design was table free, but if you know at the start that the client uses NS4 or OS 9.2  then you should have not guilt over making the thing accessable to them until they can upgrade in a year or two.

 The thing that gets me is the <font> tags. No excuse for that IMHO.

Tables don't suck. Tables are for displaying tabular data. Using tables to make whole pages sucks, because they are not for this.

I agree with duberman, table is better (and sometime required) in some situation.  Using table for page layout is not a good idea because of performance, accessibility, browser compatibility problems.

^^ That's basically what everyone has been saying