section 5: tables

Next I will show you one of the most important sections in HTML, that is, how to create tables. Tables were originally created so that data that could best be displayed as a table can be shown in the most appropriate way. The problem is that tables as so flexible that they have found a much bigger use, in formatting the layout of pages.

A simple table

Tables were designed to hold data such as statistical data. The table is defined between the <TABLE> start and end tags. Contained within these tags are defined the rows, headers and cells (in that order). An example of a simple table that holds statistical data is shown below...

If you see this example you will see a very basic table with no formatting information, specifically the table is very uniform with no special highlighting of headers etc. This all comes from the attributes to each tag. The problem is that to create even a simple table such as this requires a lot of tags and specifying the attributes to each one can become tedious, the latest version of HTML overcomes this problem by using Cascaded Style Sheets, these are not described in this tutorial. For the moment, while you are still learning about tables, it's better to stick with the original method to get a better understanding of how to create tables.