The next commands that we will discuss are the many commands that are used to make a table. Because a table is so versatile, it can be used for a wide variety of things. Some pages that I have seen on the internet have used tables for very weird things, and most of the time it looks good. On the other hand, I have seen tables used for normal lists and the pages still look good. If you use a table, your page will look extremely organized and neat because a table organizes data so well. Since there are so many different uses for the table functions I will only discuss the basic use of it. This use it to organize information. To keep things simple I will only have two different lists that hold information. The table that I will show you make organizes information horizontally, the part on the right hand side of the table corresponds to the part on the left hand side.
The command to start a table is an angle bracket “<“ followed by the word TABLE followed by an angle bracket “>”. Inside this command you would enter the size of the border (on a table there are borders which separate each section) and how wide the table is (how much of the page it uses). The border size is usually specified in pixels. If you wanted the table’s border on your page to be one pixel then, inside the starting table command, you would enter the the word BORDER then an equal sign “=” then a 1. Although the width of the table can be entered in pixels it is normally more desirable to enter it in a percent. This way no matter how large the persons monitor (or how big the browser window is) the table will always be the same perspective width for everyone. Your page is going to have a full table on it that takes up the whole page so you will want the width to be 100%. In order to do this, you would enter into the starting table command the width modifier. This modifier is designated by the word WIDTH then an equal sign “=” followed by the percent of the page that you want the table to consume (100%). Then, for a table that is going to list information, you must enter the titles of each category. The command that first needs to be used is the command that signals the web browser to make a new table row, this will be used in every row not just the row with the table titles in it. This command is an angle bracket “<“ followed by the letters TR followed by an angle bracket “>”. Then you would enter the title (head) of the first column. This command is an angle bracket “<“ followed by the letters TH followed by an angle bracket “>”. Then you would enter the title of the column, we are going to use an example from my page’s software section so the first column will be titled Program. Then you would enter the command that signals the browser that you are done entering the title of the column. This command is an angle bracket “<“ followed by a slash “/” followed by the letters TH followed by an angle bracket “>”. You would then repeat this for as many columns that you want (we will have two in our example the next column will be named Information). After you have finished the row you will need to end it with the following command, an angle bracket “<“ followed by a slash “/” followed by the letters TR followed by an angle bracket “>”. The you would proceed to enter the text or images that you want in each column. To start you would enter a TR command to start the row then you would enter the command to separate the columns to appear under the correct titles. This command is an angle bracket “<“ followed by the letter TD followed by an angle bracket “>”. Then you would enter the text or images that, for this specific table, would appear under the Program title. This text for example will be a link to Netscape’s page. You can use the previously discussed A HREF command to do this. Then you would end that column with an angle bracket “<“ followed by a slash “/” followed by the letters TH followed by an angle bracket “>”. You would then do this for every column in your table and then move on to the next row by entering a ending TR command. After you are done with your table you will have to enter the command that signals the end of the table. This command is an angle bracket “<“ followed by a slash “/” followed by the word TABLE followed by an angle bracket “>”. (If you make a table on your page and open up the page with your browser and you don’t see the table, not entering the ending table command is usually the cause.) The final source code for this table look like this:
<table border=1 width=100%>
<tr>
<th>Program</th>
<th>Information</th>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="http://home.netscape.com">Netscape Navigator</a></td><td>Hands down the best browser on the ‘net and this is the place to get it!</td></tr>
