Nobody was guilt-pressured into using floats. You might say some were guilt-pressured into writing accessible web sites but that is a significant destinction. Many public/government web sites were mandated by law to be accessible, so many developers had to write accessible html whether they liked it or not.
Of course for your personal Tranformers fan site you can use html tables to your hearts desire. Nobody is likely to complain.
But most web-design focused media is targeted professionals for whom it is a necesssary skill to be able to design pages which look good for most users and is accessible. During the dark age of IE6 it was necessary for developers to know and use a large array of hacks (including the abuse of floats) to achive this.
Of course for your personal Tranformers fan site you can use html tables to your hearts desire. Nobody is likely to complain.
But most web-design focused media is targeted professionals for whom it is a necesssary skill to be able to design pages which look good for most users and is accessible. During the dark age of IE6 it was necessary for developers to know and use a large array of hacks (including the abuse of floats) to achive this.