[thelist] Displaying tabular data with div elements

[Chris at globet.com]

All

I recently had a discussion with a colleague regarding a new website.
The colleague suggested that we would have no HTML tables at all on the
website. Tabular data would be displayed in arrangements of floated div
elements. My view (on semantic grounds) was that tabular data should be
displayed in HTML tables, with tables not used at all otherwise.

I would appreciate any opinions on the matter - is one solution more
correct than the other? Does it matter (semantically) that tabular data
is displayed in div elements? I was under the impression that div
elements were logical page divisions, which is borne out by W3Schools
(<http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_div.asp>). I was unable to find
anything about this on the W3C website, but I must confess that I don't
find this resource the easiest to use. Is it simply a matter of
preference for the developer?

Many thanks in advance!

-- 
Chris Marsh
Software Developer
t: +44 20 8246 4804 x828
f: +44 20 8246 4808
e: chris at globet.com
w: http://www.globet.com/

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