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

I also don't like the idea of using tables to arrange items on a page. However this should not become a religion - tables are bad. I've encountered one example where I have a three column layout and needed the center column to grow with the content. In the end the solution that was the simplest and worked well on all needed browsers was to use a table. IMHO CSS still has some shortcomings and sometimes it's better to use something simple that works rather than just adhere blindly to some idea ('tables are bad...').