Invisible Tables?

The table on the right (example 2) is said to be created in an "invisible" table because you don't see the border. Sometimes this looks great, but when whole web pages use these invisible tables to organize all of the information, images, links, and things on the page, it can cause problems:

• Screen readers can have a difficult time understanding the logic as it reads left-to-right.
• Because of the amount of coding it takes to make a table, it can be very hard to update web pages that have all those tags.
• All that extra code may make your pages load in the browser window more slowly. You'd be waiting on tables. (Sorry, that just had to be said.)
• Some people don't like the "boxy" look of tables, and indeed, we have newer ways of organizing pages.
• So many tables can make it hard to see everything on a smaller browser window. With an increasing number of people checking the web on small devices, this is a big consideration.

You will still find reasons to use tables, but they are best for information that really needs to be compared or shown in groupings, and not used just for random information or whole pages. Styling with CSS gives us a more modern way to deal with design without the problems above.