USING TABLES, Part 2 

Tables are used on webpages for two reasons:

1. To organize and display data in columns and rows (borders usually visible)
2. To contain text and images for a page layout (borders rarely visible)

FOR DISPLAY OF DATA

Study these presentation tables:

Example 1 (invisible borders):  http://www.gaetc.org/schedule08.htm

Example 2 (visible borders):  http://www.mcsdga.net/inside/adm/research/ghsgt/ghsgt.htm

FOR LAYOUT OF PAGE

Example 1 (visible borders)  http://www.gaetc.org/archives/2007/index.htm
Occasionally, table borders are used for "decoration."

Example 2 (invisible borders)
Study this current webpage (Using Tables, Part 2) by opening it in FrontPage's Design view. This type of layout is the result of (1) copying a layout from somebody else's webpage and (2) spending a lot of time experimenting with changes.

• Note that the vertical red line is not a regular image; it is the background image of the cell. This background image is matched with a portion of the top logo image.  This is the image:(Look again!)  Like the notebook spiral image is tiled in its container (the page), the red vertical line is tiled in its container (the cell).  Look at this page in Print Preview (or look at your handout) and you will see that the two backgrounds "disappear."

• This text is in a table within a table in order to maintain some "white space" to the right of the vertical red line.  See if you can identify all of the tables on this page.  (Click in a table.  Click Table | Select Table.)

• This table is 90 percent of the cell of its parent table.  The cell with the red background (the vertical red line) is 3 pixels wide.

TABLE EXERCISE 2

Because webmasters receive information in a variety of formats, this exercise will involve the use of non-html documents as well as table construction.  Open this sample Word document.  In FrontPage, create a table to display this data on a webpage.  Experiment with copying and pasting.  Also consider three other options:  posting the information as a Word file, converting and posting it as a pdf file, and converting it to html.