Tables are an extremely powerful Web design tool for laying out data and images on an HTML page. Tables provide Web designers ways to add vertical and horizontal structure to a page.
Tables consist of three basic components:
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rows (horizontal spacing) |
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columns (vertical spacing) |
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cells (the container created when a row and column intersect) |
Use tables to lay out tabular data, to design columns on a page, or to lay out text and graphics on a Web page. Once you create a table you can easily modify both the appearance and structure of HTML tables. You can add content; add, delete, split, and merge rows and columns; modify table, row, or cell properties to add color and alignment; and copy and paste cells.
For more advanced layout ideas you can insert a table within a table, adding even more flexibility to your design.
Using Dreamweaver, you can easily convert between a table layout and a layer layout. Both tables and layers allow you to control the positioning of page elements, but layers aren't supported in 3.0 and earlier browsers. If your design process requires rapid repositioning of content, you can use layers to lay out a page and then convert the layers to a table for viewing in older browsers. See Using layers to design tables.