The original example in the original post complained about not being able to swap the center and side columns, I didn't feel that the header was relevant. However, I could create additional examples if necessary.
Ref: real world - agree totally. However, as I said earlier today ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=463712 ) you can't blame CSS for the flaws in IE.
The thing I think a lot of people are missing is that I don't care whose fault it is.
As a designer, I just need my sites to work in the real world (where 1/3 of my traffic is IE6). I'm not placing any blame, but if it doesn't work in IE6 then it doesn't work for me.
How about you create a full solution...
* valign works
* cells are equal heights, dependent on contents
* if width of contents is too big, cells adjust and display it best they canI wish :)
Then css is not useful for a lot of layout :/
Hence why this was not intended to be a justification of CSS, just a disagreement with one specific point.
I'll let the likes of Eric Meyer etc defend the rest of it. I'm sure they know more about it than I do anyway.
Further, you test it in Firefox 3. The problem that I see is that in the Real World (TM), I must make sure that the website works on Internet Explorer 6. Most of the problems I encounter with CSS layout involves cross-browser inconsistency.
I do not pretend to be a specialist in front end work; frankly, it is my least favorite part of development. However, I've made an effort to learn CSS layout systems only to go back to tables in projects that someone else isn't doing the work.