Tables used for presentational layout are a hack, implemented in an albiet ingenious way to overcome the shortcomings of the Web quite a while ago now. Tables should be used for the display of tabular data, ie spreadsheets, calendars etc. Table layout increases download times, the deeper nested the worse it becomes. They compromise accessibility and the semantic structure of the content, and confuse screen readers and search engine bots. Clearly laid out with the proper use of captions, summaries, headers, etc for tabular data they are a beautiful thing. CSS layout is possible, faster, easier to maintain, more flexible and more accessible and the situation is only going to improve. The pain experienced by old-school designers at making the transition is understandable, but necessary. At the moment it's a subject of hot debate, but the tables-for-layout crowd are going to be increasingly marginalised as we move forward - and this is the way it should be as we try to evolve the web.
