With divs, people can't steal your images if you use
unless they really want to

In my (about 5) websites, I find that divs load faster, but that's probably just my head. Tables for layouts are frowed upon by the most hard core "standards" people. I dunno, I started learning HTML with XHTML 1.0 Strict, and now I use 1.1, so I guess you could say I never did dabble in table layouts. Anyways... nuff babbling, I say divs

I also agree that divs load faster. People can steal your images either way Table people can use table background="/temp/img.jpg" - In any case, I still say divs. The DaniWeb header, footer, and nearly all of the homepage are all div tags. Anyone find it not cross-browser compatible? Personally I feel that I can do more nifty things with div/css than I could do with tables to make it MORE cross-browser compatible

im a tables man myself, i feel i can design just as good with them as i can with div's, but i dont do div's that much so i dunno. i think ill give div's a go and make a better educated desicion later. OFF TO CODE SOME MORE!!!!

Thank you for posting this topic. I am curious as well. I have always used tables and grew very fond of them as I can do just about anything I want with them and their contents. Though, since I have been studying a bit about CSS the past few days I'm seeing a wider versatility with the CSS, and possibly divs. Though, as yet, I haven't tried using either one. So, I'm still on the fence about things.

tables for tabular data,
luv javascript tablesort routines view data any which way
but I use css to style the table,
and use tables for tables not for layout of anything else

Thank you. That helped even better to understand the usage of tables/css.

I'm all for divs. Tables should only be used for tabular data (as has been said many times above). I find divs A LOT more flexible that tables, and also a lot easier to look at in the code side of things.

I work for a place that creates and maintains about 100 or so sites, and when I have to make any structural changes to the older (tabled) sites, its a nightmare. Half the time I can't see when something begins and when it ends. I don't think it helps either that many of them were created in Dreamweaver (shutters).

DIVs are OK in theory, but I think they can be overdone. Hundreds of nested divs (or divitis), to me is almost as bad as using tables. I like to see sensible markup that isn't linked to presentation. Very often divs are used unnecessarily, e.g. for navigation, you'll sometimes see a <div id="nav">...</div>, when often all you need is something like a <ul id="nav">...</ul>. THat's just my opinion though.

YEAH DIVS!!!! they are the best thing since sliced bread! the only time i use tables is when i'm busy with a client reporting project (once again, that is only for the stats, but the whole site is basically divs). Divs give you that extra that you don't get from tables. Besides that, crawlers finds it easier to read div tags than tables (or so i read).

To find the edge, use divs!