List Items: The Tables of Web 2.0?

This week's A List Apart is one of the best yet. Three great articles, including one by a guy who plays the bouzouki. Nice job guys.

But wait a minute... in Pretty Accessible Forms, did the author just freak out about putting form data in tables because forms aren't tabular data?

We used to use tables, which worked well in this scenario - but forms don't constitute tabular data, so it's a semantic faux pas.

Then why lay a form out using a list? I'm for schematic layout as much as the next guy, but if form data is not table data, what makes it list data? Onecould argue that forms are lists of fields and labels. One could also argue that forms are columns and rows made up of fields and labels.

After 200 lines of CSS and Javascript, the author presents a really nice looking tableless form

I can use each list item (li) as a container for each row in the form, which is handy for styling.

"container for each row"? Remind me, what does the "r" instead for?

I'm actually half kidding. It's a neat solution that I'll probably try tomorrow or the next day. On the other hand, it wouldn't surprise me if, in three years, the next generation of web designers will be on a crusade to remove non-list data from list items