| Tables often serve as the backbone of any Web page layout or design. In the previous chapters, you've looked at text and learned how to insert images into a document; however, you had no real control as to how these items appeared on the page. The best way to manage content within a particular document is to place different items into tables. Tables introduce structure into an HTML document, regardless of what you're trying to organize. Whether it is text data, images, or even Flash content, tables will afford you the flexibility to control placement of these elements. Tables have been the dominant tool for Web layout for many years, and continue to be the layout choice for most Web professionals. Just recently, with the edition of layers and CSS, there are now emerging options for precise placement of content. The W3C recommends using the CSS markup to position and layout your designs on the Web. As it starts to catch on, tables will lose popularity, giving way to these new standards. With that aside, tables still play a crucial role in site development and design. There are two modes in Dreamweaver when it comes to creating tables: the standard view and the layout view. These modes behave in different ways, and in different situations you may find one mode more effective than the other. This chapter starts by discussing tables in general and then moves on to the standard view. After you have a solid foundation of tables, you'll learn about the layout view. |
