erik_moeller@gmx.de (Erik Moeller) writes:
Yes they do, and some of them are quite good at it. Lynx is worst (it does the right-alignment Karl describes), w3m is acceptable and links even puts nice little borders around the cells.
Putting borders around cells is even worse. This way you waste precious horizontal space. Another ugly issue is, the formatting/displaying of the tables happen "on-the-fly"; thus often you cannot start reading a partially downloaded page because elments are flipping around...
BTW, rule of thumb: if you cannot read a page using lynx, it is not worth reading at all ;)
The CPU usage is negligible in text browsers and most graphical browsers,
Don't forget that many a lot "low end" notebooks are stil in use; on them using Galeon or Mozilla often isn't an option (on 233MHz, 64MB RAM and a 800x600 display I refuse to run it).
CPU usage isn't the strongest argument, but it sums up together with all the other arguments and leads to the conclusion that table usage is of dubious value for the reader.
The nicer a page looks the less info it carries. But people seems to ask for it and they get it...