[WSG] td != div

[Kenny Graham]

In most of the previous table layout vs css layout arguments I've seen on here, people refer to "divs vs tables". Now, I never learned table based layouts, and don't understand them (spacer gifs, etc).  Because of this, I don't/can't think along the lines of "I'm replacing tables with divs".  But many of the XHTML/CSS sites I see clearly do.  For instance, they'll put a <ul> inside a <div id="menu">, just so that they can style the <ul>, instead of just giving the <ul> itself an id.  Or put the contents of a paragraph inside a <span id="p1"> instead of giving the paragraph itself an id of p1.  The only time divs don't make me cringe is when they're used to enclose a group of elements with the header that applies to them, and this purpose of divs is being replaced with <section>.  I know that divs are more semantically neutral than tables, but is wrapping an element in 5 divs and a span really that much better than wrapping it in a table? Hopefully this will start a debate that I can learn something from, since I have a limited background in tables.