On the contrary, semantics are very important from accessibility point of view.

The main problem with table layouts was that a site re-design meant rebuilding all the pages/templates from scratch, where as in theory CSS-based layouts meant changing just a single CSS file.

In practice though we always had to clean up and modify the HTML anyway. Sometimes just to remove all the old table cruft, but often adding and removing page elements. But pages did become cleaner and easier to maintain without table layouts, so it was a net improvement.

Yeah me neither, I think the CSS being cool and hard to use was the real reason. People like being ”elite”, and tables were just dead simple.

I am surprised people here still hold on to that era of CSS. There are even people in the comments being proud of clearfix

But I should probably be thankful for CSS for getting me out of webdev early :)

Tables were easy to build, but hard to maintain, Especially when looking at someone else's undocumented code.

>> layouts were implemented by abusing table elements to create a grid.

> Never understood what was actually wrong with it

Separation of concerns?