joomla is a cms and the only thing that uses tables is the interchangeable template. Presumably they focused on the development of the framework etc. and just hired a designer to do a default template.

i find this chart to be very true. i also sometimes still end up using tables because some layouts simply don't work or are a pain to do with css. i don't think tables are that evil. not every page needs to be barrier-free...

IE is such a !"§$% browser! rendering bugs, javascript slow as hell, no canvas tag,... someone should write an activex plugin for it that embeds an entire modern browser engine like webkit.

Smarty seems quite good.
Though that doesn't fix the CSS in IE crap.

A few days ago I stumbled upon a very nice css framework - called 'the 960 grid system' - and was first very sceptic, after having a look at it I was stunned.
The css does all the layout nearly itself.

There is a great video tutorial to get the concept and to get into work.

I changed my mind about layout w/o tables completely.

now, I looked at that 960 video, I must say, I might just be convinced to use it.

960 is nice but i did similar stuff myself already and like he said in the video it's not a solution for everything.

haha, google had the same idea i mentioned above:
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/...wser-plugin.ars

oh, thanks for the link alex
i´ll have a look

i´ve the same problems like in the chart . and even i cant ban the internet explorer, i can try to make my css-layout better

After layouting 2-3 pages with the 960 system I say:
It saves you a lot of time but as mentioned in the video you should have a certain amount of CSS experience to fix some things (Backgrounds, Margins in some special layouts, etc.)
I'll definitely use it a lot in the future and have a deeper look into other css frameworks.

@Tempelbauer and others who are interested:
Here is a link to a german article about that chrome-in-IE-plugin:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Chrome-verkleidet-sich-als-Internet-Explorer--/meldung/145750

http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=HundredPercentHeight
i just came across this IE6 hack. another reason less to use tables. but there still are some cases where tables just work better...