Datalist displayed like a table

Question

How can i achieve this layoutalt text http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/1870/screenshot20091212at151.jpg (now its done with tables) and still have semantic markup, i guess the best suited tag for this would be dl. Every cell must have the height of their row.

EDIT: the left column contains the description and the right the data. So i don't think this is well suited for tables. It would be if i would move the description to the table head, but that would take 2000 px width

Answer 1

If you are concerned about the semantic and think that this is the reason why a definition list is better suited, read this official document about definition list.

It says:

Definition lists, created using the DL element, generally consist of a series of term/definition pairs (although definition lists may have other applications)

and

Definition lists vary only slightly from other types of lists in that list items consist of two parts: a term and a description.

That means the term (e.g. Anrede) is described/defined by its description (e.g. Herr ). We can argue here, but Herr is not really a description of Anrede it is more one possible value/word (data) you can use as Anrede. And a definition would be

A way to address persons, depending on gender, graduation etc.

Btw for all non german speakers, Anrede means salutation.

Of course there are exceptions but from an semantic point of view, a table fits better.

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All I want to say is: Don't burden yourself with such things. To get this looking the same with DL tags and CSS is not worth the effort. To use a table for your data is fine, really.

Answer 2

If it's tabular information, then a table is not the best, it's the only sensible way to display it - that's what tables were made for!

To be a bit more formal about it, the semantics of your data is indeed tabular, there's no reason in the world to lie about it.

Answer 3

I would use a <dl>, because it is just 2 columns.