go.

In the redesign of this site, I had a hard time figuring out exactly how to structurally mark up the global navigation. As you can see at the top of this page, what I needed was a vertical list of links and a vertical list of descriptions for those links.

In keeping with the current trend [alistapart.com], I originally planned to mark the links up as an unordered list. I would also use an unordered list for the descriptions. Once I typed this out, it was obvious that the markup would not properly show the relationship betwixt the links and descriptions.

I began doing google searches for solutions. Most of the pages I found included that taboo element, <table>, so I kept looking. After several searches, nothing. But I kept looking. There had to be a way to structurally mark this up. Still searching - More tables… Then, it occurred to me - I wanted data in two columns, with an unknown number of rows. This was a table!

My fear of tables, I realized, had led me right past a couple of pages that said things like “but, if you actually want to represent tabular data, then you should use tables”. So I’ll say something that you’ve all heard before. There is nothing wrong with using tables; just use them properly. I’m not saying this for your benefit - you already knew it. I’m saying it for mine.