The main problem with table layouts was that a site re-design meant rebuilding all the pages/templates from scratch, where as in theory CSS-based layouts meant changing just a single CSS file.
In practice though we always had to clean up and modify the HTML anyway. Sometimes just to remove all the old table cruft, but often adding and removing page elements. But pages did become cleaner and easier to maintain without table layouts, so it was a net improvement.
In practice though we always had to clean up and modify the HTML anyway. Sometimes just to remove all the old table cruft, but often adding and removing page elements. But pages did become cleaner and easier to maintain without table layouts, so it was a net improvement.