I like CSS but I'd agree that tables got a bad rap. They were very easy, very effective, and only occasionally turned into a nightmare of nesting that was impossible to maintain
My problem with CSS now is that it's gotten too bloated to the point where it's introducing privacy and security risks. I really want an add-on that restricts CSS by default to only a sane subset of features.
They're also awful to maintain over time, if you're needing to add new elements and require new columns or cells (and then there's the need to nest tables when using them for layout).
I attempted to fix a website by adding closing table cells that were missing, and finally got the page to validate as XHTML Strict and Transitional. The entire layout shifted, and was completely based on those missing end tags.
