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Learning how to make a table.
Learning how to make a Web page Table will certainly wrap up your basic knowledge of Web page design. Every thing else will be best suited for a class totally devoted to Web page design.
Tables help designers control space on the page as well as visually on the screen. Control is what we need, when browsers have their own rules that may differ from our own.
To help clarify the terminology, when we make Tables the coding Tags are referred to as Flags. OK, don't talk to me, I didn't write the rules!
The two browsers we use, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape, treat Tables a little differently from each other. I usually have beginning students use Netscape to view their Tables. Netscape is very unforgiving in Table construction, leave an ending flag off and you won’t see anything on the Web page! On the other hand, “Momma” Internet Explorer is so forgiving that it will display what you think is a properly written set of instructions. This is false security, even if she does love you!
You’ll be surprised at how little you have to learn to create Tables, just a few flags and you are up and running. We’ll start with very basic concepts and add to them throughout this chapter.
It’s Rows First, Columns Second
Please think of a Table somewhat as a “grid” of individual cells, first by rows, and then as you add more rows, it will become apparent that there are columns of data. (The “grid” mentioned could be shown with or without borderlines. We will always start with borderlines and then decide later if they must be removed.) So first the Rows, then the Columns, please remember... that’s not too hard so far, huh?
To begin your Table adventure, we will create the following flags. These would be placed exactly where you would like the table to appear. Since these are HTML tags they will appear within the special brackets < > and they will use the special stop character /.
This is the order and sequence used in making Web page Tables:
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< TABLE BORDER="3" > this is the very basic starting point, later we will add a few other items to this tag.
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Press the [Enter] key and hit the [Space Bar] two (2) times.
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Type this two-sided flag: < TR > this is how you start a new Row. In the future you could add some other items inside this flag. However, this flag will create a new Row without any additional coding.
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Press the [Enter] key and hit the [Space Bar] four (4) times.
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Type this two-sided flag: < TD > this is how you create a special cell; each time you type a < TD > it will create another cell in the Row.
On the next page you can check the code shown in Notepad against what you have written so far and make any necessary changes. After checking the code, please save your file as table-test.html, and then preview it in Netscape. If you do not own Netscape, use Internet Explorer to view the file.
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Page updated 06/20/2025
