Lesson 8. Building Tables

So far in this book, you've used plain vanilla HTML to build and position the elements on your pages. Although you can get your point across using paragraphs and lists, there's another way to present content on your pages. Using tables, you can lay out page content in rows and columns, with or without borders. And the content you include within your tables isn't restricted to text. Tables provide more control over the appearance of your pages because you can include any type of HTML content (images, links, forms, and more).

Tables were officially introduced in HTML 3.2. Since then, they've had an enormous influence on web page design and construction. HTML 4.01 includes changes that improve the way tables are loaded and displayed in browsers. Authors can specify tables that display incrementally or that are more accessible to users who browse the Web with nonvisual browsers. Additional elements create tables with fixed headers and footers that render larger tables across several pages (such as for printouts).

In this Lesson

Today, you'll learn all about tables, including the following:

• Defining tables in HTML

• Creating captions, rows, and heading and data cells

• Modifying cell alignment

• Creating cells that span multiple rows or columns

• Adding color to tables

• Using tables in web documents