lucy24 - 9:55 pm on May 16, 2011 (gmt 0)

Tables must completely render, top to bottom, from <table> to </table> in your source code before the browser will display them.

Unless you do {table-layout: fixed;}. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've used it myself, mainly because I forget the option exists. But for genuine tables-- the kind with headers and a bunch of numbers in many, many rows-- it can save the user-agent a lot of time and work.

But in the source code, those two bits of content may be widely separated by all kinds of table mark-up and other table cells.

Doesn't the same apply to divs? If you've got two long side-by-side elements, the code will still give you everything in the first column before moving on to the second.