The first step in becoming aware of how best to use tables as a fundamental tool in Web design is to understand the HTML and XHTML elements used to create them (see Table 9.1).
Table 9.1. Table Elements in HTML and XHTML
Element
Purpose
table
The main table tag, it denotes the beginning and subsequent end of a table.
tr
The table row tag and its companion closing tag, <tr> </tr> .
td
The table data or table cell . This tag is used to define individual table cells .
th
Defines a cell with header information. Typically, this renders in bold.
caption
A caption describes the nature of a table. You are allowed only one caption per table. Captions are especially helpful for accessibility and are rarely used in table layout, but rather are reserved for table data.
thead
Table head, for table header information.
tfoot
Table foot , for footer information.
tbody
Table body.
colgroup
Defines a group of columns . There are two ways to specify the group. One is to use the span attribute to specify the number of columns to be grouped. The other way is to use the col element.
col
Used to define columns within a group.
The trick now is knowing when and how to use and modify these elements. Fortunately, Dreamweaver provides a lot of help. It is possible to create effective layout tables without ever interacting with the underlying HTML, although recognizing the tags makes certain operations ”such as selecting tables ”more convenient .