Head First HTML with CSS

tabular versus presentation
624 Chapter 14
Tonight’s talk: Table and CSS spar
over how to lay out forms.
Table CSS
Hey CSS, what’s happening?
What do you mean? I dropped by to help get
these forms in shape. They’re looking a bit... well,
ragged, if you ask me.
Yes, and some people consider form
elements to be tabular data, you know.
Besides, I’m much better at making forms
look good than you are.
Says me. I get forms looking nice and neat, with
the labels and form elements all aligned properly.
Well, I agree I can’t add those little extra touches
like you can, but that stuff doesn’t really matter
anyway. That’s just the icing on the cake. The real
trick to making forms user-friendly is getting the
labels and elements presented in a way that makes
sense, so there’s no confusion about what goes with
what. Users don’t really care about all that other
stuff.
What on earth are you doing in this chapter,
Table?
I agree the forms need some fixing up in the
looks department, but that’s my job. You’re for
tabular data, remember?
Says who?
I can position things too, you know. These
readers have read the chapter on positioning;
they know how to get things “all aligned
properly” using CSS. Anyway, even if you
can align the form elements properly, you
certainly can’t do things like add color and
padding and change the font family.