Understanding Layers

Tables give designers great control over the design of Web pages by enabling text and images to be positioned within rows, columns , and cells . But the contents of a cell cannot overlap one another, or extend to the edge of a table border. For the ultimate in control over Web page contents, you can use FrontPage to create layers.

A layer is a container that can enclose text, images, or other Web page contents. Layers are often called dynamic or design-time , because you can move them around freely on the page by simply clicking and dragging them. A layer can overlap another layer, or can be nested within another layer.

Caution

Layers are flexible and advanced tools, but they have limitations. Some viewers who connect to pages that contain layers, and who have older browsers (Netscape Navigator 4 or earlier, or Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 or earlier) won t see anything at all, because those older browsers don t support layers. In addition, even if viewers have up-to-date browsers, don t expect pages that have been designed using layers to appear exactly the same from browser to browser, or from one operating system to another. You can alleviate these problems by converting layers to tables as described later in this chapter.