<Table>,<div>,<p>,<li> ?

[Klen]

What is best when it comes to usability and speed on site to create tables and anything similar to tables?
Since you can use 4 different ways to accomplish same thing.When it comes to classic html tables code,that is easiest to create and you can also add css tag which allows instant changes like color,size and similar.
But some people claim how it's better to use div because then site loading is faster since size of code is smaller.
Is it really necessary to use div code?
Or maybe we can use simple p or li code to make what we want?
For example,what i want to do,is four pictures(thumbs)in row,to have a description text under each picture,and to be able to change instantly alignment,left/center/right.
Another thing which should be instantly changed when needed,is to be able to change number of pictures without having a layout corrupted ,so you simply change one number instead changing entire code to get desired result.

Which method do you use ?

[Vendzilla]

Try them all and do a speed test on the page. Tables are the easiest I think but with faster and faster broadband does it really matter?

[Sid70]

since when internet came back to 33600?

[WarChild]

Tables are appropraite to use if you need to display data in a table format. Don't use the formatting otherwise. Simple.

[FlexxAeon]

go with div and p. tables are not as "easy" as some think, especially with complicated layouts and alignments all the <tr><td> span colspan rowspan blah blah blah blah blah gets ugly and confusing.

[martinsc]

tables for data, divs for design, p for paragraphs of text and li for list items....

[RyuLion]

go with div and p. tables are not as "easy" as some think, especially with complicated layouts and alignments all the <tr><td> span colspan rowspan blah blah blah blah blah gets ugly and confusing.

[Serge Litehead]

Use tables ONLY for tabular data, meaning one row equals one record set.

If you're using multiple record sets per row/s it becomes real nightmare in maintaining and generation of table's rows and cells in your application, you will have to enable processes to count how many rows and cells there are, put some obscure conditions and the whole thing comes out not being elegantly implemented. It is simply not logical and not the best solution to use tables in such way. Also table is not rendered in a browser until it is fully loaded.

For the rows of thumbs/titles/etc which are basically separate sets of records its best to stack them in to rows with DIV containers and having content positioned appropriately within them through the use of css classes