Chapter 8: Organize Data with Tables

Overview

How to…

• Understand the table controversy

• Create a simple table

• Modify your table’s appearance

• Create page layouts with tables

• Design a table of links for site navigation

Chapters 1–7 focus on equipping you with the raw materials for creating your own Web site and acquainting you with XHTML and “standards-compliant” Web design. With what you learned in those chapters, you could easily put together a series of Web pages that you would be proud of. However, if you have been working with some of the exercises, you also have become aware of some of HTML’s limitations. The chief limitations Web designers wrestle with are presentation and layout. How do you learn to position the various parts of your page so that your content is presented in a pleasing manner? Chapters 8–10 cover the issues of structure and style, and how best to control them on your Web pages. In this chapter, you will be introduced to perhaps the easiest (and likely the most controversial) method of influencing the layout and design of a page: tables.