Tables

When we hear the word tables, most of us think of data displayed in rows and columns. While that is what a table is, you might be surprised to learn that most web pages are designed using tables. Take this page for example, it contains several tables: a larger table and several smaller tables inside of it (nested tables).

You can check this out for yourself by selecting view on the menubar of the browser window, and then source. A new window will open with the source code for this page. After you've gone through the lessons on tables, you'll be able to find the table tags in this window. In fact, you can check out the source code for nearly all pages on the internet this way. Check out a few and you'll see how many use tables for formatting.

So, let's being learning how to make and format tables. We're going to begin with a new document rather than working in the page(s) you've created in previous lessons. You'll want to open Notepad if you are on a PC, or TextEdit if you are on a Mac*(see comment below). For ease in communication, I'm going to refer to your new document as " your notepad".

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If you are on a Mac, and using OSX, open TextEdit. Then, on the menu bar, select TextEdit and Preferences. In the window that opens make sure that the "New Document Attributes" is set to "plain text". Earlier Macs had a program called SimpleText. If you are running an "older" Mac, you'll want to use that program.