Should I use <table> or <ul>?

Question

I have to render dynamic data using javascript which should be displayed as n rows, m columns. I have heard of ill-effects of using tables but cannot justify on my own as to why I should/should-not use tables. Can you reason the best practice in choosing the alternative for the requirement. I at all <ul> is the alternative, how do I manage to make it look like a table?

If I use tables, I cannot animate table rows. Keeping this consideration, please suggest the alternative.

Answer 1

You should not use tables for layout. It's perfectly reasonable to use tables for tabular data. If you have "n rows" and "m columns", that sounds an awful lot like tabular data and it would be appropriate to use a <table>.

As far as "animating" table rows, if by that you mean dynamically adding and removing rows from a table using javascript, that is supported. See the DOM Reference for table methods. It supports operations such as insertRow() and deleteRow().