Their default behavior was block, not inline block. I forget the exact application, but I was trying for a grid-like layout. It would have worked if I could have set img tags to inline-block and had it work in all browsers (it was 14 years ago, so I honestly don't remember the specifics). It worked in some browsers, but not in all, so I wound up having to wrap the imgs in divs to get what I needed. Neither of us can go back and _prove_ whether I am remembering incorrectly or you are, so you are free to continue assuming I was a moron who just experienced this because I knew nothing about CSS.

The point I was trying to make is that many people do things because they wasted way too much time trying to get CSS to work in older browsers, and CSS is just _part_ of what we do, so it's easy to not have every detail of the current state right there in your head.