Well yes, if you make a div work like a table and a nested div work like a table cell, you can indeed technically get away without using tables and cells, but you're fooling nobody.
+1. In what world, other than the current one fraught with our bizarre legacy, would you link the concept of vertical centering with the concept of "tables" and "cells"? How about: "display:non-idiotic-mode" and "display:layout-support-any-sane-person-would-expect", and now you can use "vertical-align"? A bit verbose but more accurate!
Re:CSS Absolute Centering
by unclebucknasty on Saturday August 10, 2013 @09:26PM
(#6193376)
Tables (or grids) are a very natural way of thinking about layout. Just about every webapp/site uses some sort of grid scheme as its layout model.
This is probably why the woefully layout-inadequate CSS had to include these hacks to mimic table behavior.
So, it's more like CSS is fooling nobody.
This is incorrect. Using display: table and display: table-cell allows you to achieve equal height columns.