In HTML, before CSS, if you built your tables properly, you could be already doing responsive web design.
And you did not need to embed table after table. Proper, one-level tables. Purest of pure. Of course, you had to struggle at times to find the exact code that worked across browsers, and across screen resolutions. At the web agency, all browsers are created equal. (Shhh, fortunately, Internet Explorer is dead.)
We, the users, have a right to use a great navigator!