Paul

It is possible to still use tables to display tabular data (which is the point of semantic content). See this demo: http://codepen.io/peiche/details/zvwERd/

If I could, maybe I would upgrade to 2.x. But the real world demands otherwise.

Yes, and since IE7 does not support the box-sizing property, there's no way to fix it. :)

The default box sizing is content-box, which in my opinion is counter-intuitive. When I specify the width of an element, I'd expect it to be the entire visible element, including padding and border. The traditional box model, to me, makes more sense.