I don't know why the comparison with toothache came on my mind when I was thinking about writing on tables vs divs topic, but that's what came on my mind, you will forgive me for unpleasant associations.

But to the essence of things... I read some statistic pointing that about 95% of web masters/web designers still use tables instead of divs while constructing a website.

I don't know what will be the future of websites, possibly they will disappear one day at all because dynamic blogs and other similar dynamic content sites (like Facebook, Myspace etc) capture a user's attention more and more rather than a regular website. Nonetheless, websites still exist whether it is personal, e-commerce, informative or other kind of website.

That is why I would like to talk once again about the principals of HTML website construction. There was written an entire number of articles about the war of divs against tables. Short, clear and smart information can be found for example in next 3 articles below:

http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/

http://www.webrichtlijnen.nl/english/manual/development/production/tables/layout/pros-and-cons/

http://www.mardiros.net/css-layout.html

Read them if you want to clear up for yourself the cituation with divs and tables.

What caused me to ring the bell I will explain later. For now I just want to try to convince web masters who just have started their career, students who are studying web mastering right now and experienced web masters who used to build websites since 2000 or earlier on base of tables to start migrating to divs method.

Using tables in website constructing is a bad practice. The result a user or a client gets is the same whether it was built on tables or on divs because actually waht he/she gets is a website. But how it was built? The method is hidden from user's eyes but a master must care about this for user's comfort sake.

On the picture below the method of therapy is thrilling: painful, physically and mentally hard for a patient, anti-hygienic, recovery takes a long time (if so). I would compare it to tables method.

On this picture the environment calms a patient down, a patient gets hygienic, non-painful, clean, modern cure. And this picture I would compare to divs method.

Below is my own short a kind of chart giving an approximate comparison of two methods (according to my experience).

So, what I am trying to say is:"Please mind divs and don't mind tables while constructing the website!"

However I want to add that the only appropriate place for tables usage is an email newsletter. When you construct the email newsletter or any email stuff never use divs. Email, whether it is Outlook, Thunderbird, gmail, aol or what ever else does not understand divs, external CSS and all normal modern methods of website constructing. And here the outdated knowledge of tds and trs is absolutely great but tds and trs are not good anymore for modern looking, fast loading and comfortable for use website.

I hope this short blog post will help to those who is still sure that if other webmasters use tables it is good for you too. No, for you it is not good if you want to call yourself professional web master, who cares about your user, your client, your professional dignity your reputation and your skills.