I've all but given up giving a damn about web standards. No one _REALLY_ cares. Not the uses, not the developers, not the w3c with their open-to-interpretation "recommendations", and ESPECIALLY NOT browsers vendors who, for various reasons, aren't able to nail down a consistent interpretation of web standards.

The choices are to use a framework which does the shit-work for you, or resort to lowest-common denominator "whatever works" techniques like HTML tables.