The .generaltable instances look nice and are commonly used. But there are some activities where tables are given their own classes entirely, and not given the .generaltable as well. This makes it hard to style all tables with general styles. It's no problem for a mod developer to add additional classnames to target with the mod's own CSS, but the parent classname should be retained.

An example of this is the forum. At present, the table of threads for a news forum has only one classname:

  <table cellspacing="0" class="forumheaderlist" id="yui_3_5_1_1_1353535026017_577">

This means that anything special theme designers did with .generaltable will not apply to the forum table. A better strategy would be to include the .generaltable class, and then add additional classes for mod-specific styling.

  <table cellspacing="0" class="generaltable forumheaderlist" id="yui_3_5_1_1_1353535026017_577">

David Scotson has identified several elements, all of which could be styled first under a general .table class:

table#explaincaps,

table#defineroletable,

table.grading-report,

table#listdirectories,

table.rolecaps,

table.userenrolment,

table#form,

form#movecourses table,

form#movecourses table,

#page-report-log-user .generaltable,

#page-admin-course-index .editcourse,

.forumheaderlist,

.userprofilebox table.list,

.generaltable

Context: http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Standardize_classnames_and_layout_to_facilitate_theming#Standardize_inheritance_for_tables