Exploring Form Alignment

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The recent demise of the major Web-authoring tool, NetObjects Fusion, has two lessons for us:

NOF's strategy of using nested tables to position screen elements has no future.
Reliance on the attributes of a particular tool rather than on standards-based techniques dooms you to the fate of that tool.

Exploring Form Alignment

Using tables for layout purposes is wasteful.

Development time is wasted; maintenance time is triply wasted; Web server bandwidth is wasted; the capacity of the client browser is wasted. The method is so obviously wasteful, even arguing against it is a waste of time.

And yet, most Web experts align forms with tables, defending the practice with rhetorical flourishes of "data semiotics" and "implied columnar semantics."

Perhaps they should BS less and code more...