Learning Web Design, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER 8 BASIC TABLE MARKUP

IN THIS CHAPTER

How tables are used

Basic table structure

The importance of headers

Spanning rows and columns

Cell padding and spacing

Captions and Summaries

Making tables accessible

Before we launch into the markup for tables, let’s check in with our progress so far. We’ve covered a lot of territory: how to establish the basic structure of an (X)HTML document, how to mark up text to give it meaning and structure, how to make links, and how to add image content to the page. That’s really the majority of what you need to do for most straightforward web content.

This chapter and Chapter 9, Forms describe the markup for specialized content that you might not have a need for right away. Feel free to skip these chapters and go directly to Chapter 10, Understanding the Standards to learn more about XHTML, standards compliance, and validation. Or, if you’re getting really antsy to make your pages look good, skip right to Part III and start playing with Cascading Style Sheets. The tables and forms chapters will be here when you’re ready for them.

Are you still with me? Great. Let’s talk tables. We’ll start out by reviewing how tables should be used, then learn the elements used to create (X)HTML tables. Remember, this is an (X)HTML chapter, so we’re going to focus on the markup that structures the content into tables, and we won’t be concerned with how the tables look. Like any web content, the appearance (or presentation, as we say in the web development ...