As to the Microsoft Products, I'm sure it's some evil plan to try and establish their "dominance". What better way to do this than invent "technology" and have it implemented in only your products?

I do use the ' ' once in a while on my pages, but with good reason. With Netscape at least, empty tables will disappear without one of the characters in the table. I use colored tables on my pages quite extensively instead of horizontal rules, and this is necessary to do the job.

- p u n k k i d
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." -Albert Einstein

Update: Sorry folks, didn't read all the posts before I commented about the tables