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HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, 6th Edition
book

HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, 6th Edition

by Chuck Musciano, Bill Kennedy
October 2006
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
680 pages
21h 44m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, 6th Edition

Beyond Ordinary Tables

On the face of it, tables are pretty ordinary: just a way for academics and other like-minded data crunchers to format items into columns and rows for easy comparison. Scratch below the surface, though, and you will see that tables are really extraordinary. Besides <pre>, the <table> tag and related attributes provide the only way for you to easily control the layout of your document. The content inside a <pre> tag, of course, is very limited. Tables, on the other hand, may contain nearly anything allowed in normal body content, including multimedia and forms. And the table structure lets you explicitly control where those elements appear in the user's browser window. With the right combinations of attributes, tables provide a way for you to create multicolumn text and side and straddle heads. They also enable you to make your forms easier to read, understand, and fill out. That's just for starters.

We don't know that we can recommend getting too caught up with page layout—tables or beyond. Remember, it ain't about looks, it's about content. But....

It's easy to argue that tables of information benefit from some controlled layout and that forms follow a close second. Tables provide the only way to create predictable, browser-independent layouts for your web pages. Used in moderation and filled with quality content, tables are a tool that every author should be able to wield.

And now that we've whetted your appetite for page layout with tables, don't despair ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596527322Errata Page