Simon Willison’s Weblog

“Interactive Tabular Data”

20th September 2003

Just spotted in a comment by Drew McLellan on Russell Beattie’s Notebook:

I’m comfortable using tables for forms. My point of view is that they are interactive tabular data.

I’d never thought of them like that before, but that view point certainly makes a lot of sense.

I recently contributed my own opinion on trying to create “semantic” forms to an interesting discussion on SimpleBits:

... When an HTML page incorporates forms it starts to move away from being a “structural document” and towards being a “logical interface” instead—once I start working with forms I switch my focus from semantics to accessibility and usability. Since these share many of the same requriements as semantics (use proper header tags etc) I don’t feel too guilty about using divs instead of paragraphs.