tables and frames/iframes vs CSS and divs

I've been into web designing for almost a year, as you all know I stil have quite a bunch of things to learn but what is it with the whole table vs css thing. What exactly makes one better then the other. I've seen lots of websites using tables and they look great. I mean they' don't take too much time to download. What do you guys think.

Uhmm okay, well just to let you know tables SUCK, tables don't download quickly they take time because information is stored in each one - unlike css which seperates style from content and is much more accessiable and user friendly.

well I have always used talbe although now I am doing the transition to CSS
and so far i can say that i lke CCS better

Tables are the best way to go --- for tabular material. The complaints tend to come because tables are stretched beyond what they were designed for. Many websites (my own included, since it predates CSS) used tables as means of positioning items on a page. And it generally works, for now. But CSS does it better, and less obtrusively in the code. Also, as CSS and < style> tags developed, some of the < table> attributes that made it work so well for page positioning have been deprecated, and along about 2 or 3 browser generations down the track will no longer be supported, meaning that those pages that haven't switched to CSS will begin to fall apart.

Another problem with tables for positioning is that they are not friendly to screen readers (for the blind) or other non-common media. For instance a table that looks fine on a normal wide screen may be impossible to read meaningfully on a cell phone because each column may have to be interpreted as a separate page.

All that said, it should still be recognized that < table>s are the best way to go for displaying data in a chart form. CSS can be worked around to emulate tables, but it's a much a kludge to do that as it ever was to use tables for formatting.

Great explaination there...
There is a good explaination on Sitepoint... http://www.sitepoint.com/article/tables-vs-css

It is important to note that there is no "real-life" or practical benefits (other than accessibility)when you start to replace each-and-every-single <table> tag with <DIV> tags and attempt to use full CSS to display your webpages properly across popular browsers.

It's one thing to use the regular CSS style to replace the same fonts that will be used all over the place. But it's another when you take little bits and pieces of code out of the page and bury it some huge .css file and then try to figure out and try to remember where they all came from and what each piece of code did 2 months from now.

And another note, divs are a world away from frames and iframes!

Another couple of points to add..

In the future, modern browsers will start to ignore attributes of certain elements (e.g. tables) that may have been relied upon for layout.. so at some point the "old" websites relying on tables will start to break.

The DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) states that your business premises must be accessible to disabled people. This includes your website, and if you have used tables for layout then there is a good chance it is not accessible for someone with a screen reader, for example (as previously stated by OwenKL). I don't know of a case where this has gone to court but I do expect something controversial to happen, so if your a business or developing for a business keep this in mind.

And css box layouts is the modern cutting edge way to do things, so if your a self respecting geek get on board!

ill always go for css. i loves it (L)