Should Tables be avoided in HTML at any cost?

Question

It is advisable to use tables in HTML pages (now that we have CSS)?

What are the applications of tables? What features/abilities does tables have that are not in CSS?

Answer 1

Tables are for outputting tabular data. Anything that you might display in a spreadsheet, columns of results, that kind of thing.

The suggestion of using CSS rather than tables is for columnar layouts, which weren't really actual tables. It was never intended to suggest that tables should be removed completely.