HTML Coding
Single-Cell Tables
By Laura Lemay
A rose is a rose is a rose. But a table, in HTML, is not necessarily a table. Using the <TABLE> construct, you can create a wealth of Web-page effects that do not involve arranging data into rows and columns. A little flexibility defining a "table" can open up a whole new world of design ideas.
Last month I talked about using tables for laying out Web-page elements in a grid fashion, where the page itself was a table and you arranged text, images, and other tables inside it. This month we'll treat the table construct as a small design element.
A warning: Many of the features I'll describe this month have been introduced in recent versions of Netscape or Internet Explorer, and may not be available to older browsers or browsers with fewer table capabilities. While none of these features should break other browsers that support tables, you might want to test the effect in other browsers.
Single-Cell Tables
Many of the effects you'll learn about in this column employ the single-cell table. If you only envision a table as a set of rows and columns, the idea of a single-cell table may seem pointless. Why bother?
The exciting thing about the single-cell table is that the cell and its contents become elements separate from the rest of the page. You can then arrange and design the cell without affecting everything around it. You can do many interesting things with a single-cell table that you can't do with just a plain text element or an image.
