For the past few years, I have been teaching people the importance of using CSS for layout of web pages and why you shouldn't use tables for layout. But HTML5 changes that. HTML5 recognizes that while tables are not a good layout tool, many designers use them all the time. So, rather than making tables for layout invalid HTML, HTML5 allows them, but recommends that you use a feature that indicates to the user agent that the table is for layout rather than tabular data.
Read the full article: HTML5 and Tables for Layout
That’s fine. It’s not XHTML after all, and, for a reason.
Actually my opinion is that they should have made a completely different element, not called “table”. 2 different jobs, 2 different elements.
It’s not like there isn’t precedent for a non-semantic element. We could call the hypothetical new element “super nested grid of box shaped spans”, maybe?
Actually, in real life: I predict how certain designers will react to this. There are those who haven’t yet learned how to do a table-less layout, much less learned that there are a lot of reasons to do it which don’t have anything to do with “semantics” or “validation” or “spider optimization” (in other words, matters which aren’t relelvant to the *experience* of developing). I perceive (fairly or not, you decide) these developers to be very stuck on “reliable” means, on “preserving” instead of “throwing away” their old knowledge, and on how their pages look, not on the quality of their code.
So my prediction is: Developers like that are going to at best ignore and at worst remain unaware of any such atrribute. These folks already ignore the TH element amirite.