Is it bad use “display: table;” to organise a layout into 2 columns?

Question

I am trying to make a 2 column layout, apparently the bane of CSS. I know you shouldn\'t use tables for layout, but I\'ve settled on this CSS. Note the use of display: table

Answer 1

Let me break it down to you. element had it's charms which was the reason behind everyone using it. But then Semantics got evolving. We were way over and above with Syntax. Decisions were made, on behalf of which XHTML 2.0 was discarded and HTML5 was adopted. Read the history of WHATWG ( Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) to get your concepts clear about it.

The main stance behind removing certain elements from HTML was they were not meant to structure things but were meant to style them, whereas HTML has nothing to do with styling an element.

HTML is meant to structure a web page. CSS is meant for styling that structure.

So, the HTML element and and many others were removed from the specifications. They were specifically being used to style instead of structuring.

To decide the fate of element it was decided to keep it in the specs as in the real tables are meant to be structured with it, but to shift the focus of a common web designer similar abilities/specs should be added to CSS.

Now HTML element is meant for the structure of a table and nothing else. If you want to use the table for styling go ahead and use display:table; which is a CSS property and CSS is meant to style the elements of a structure in HTML. Above that it can be modified and control E.g. in RWD you can specify any element to change its display from table to block or whatever.