Operation Manual

168
USING DREAMWEAVER
Laying out pages with HTML
Last updated 3/28/2012
More Help topics
“Laying out pages with CSS” on page 144
Table formatting precedence in HTML
When formatting tables in Design view, you can set properties for the entire table or for selected rows, columns, or
cells in the table. When a property, such as background color or alignment, is set to one value for the whole table and
another value for individual cells, cell formatting takes precedence over row formatting, which in turn takes
precedence over table formatting.
The order of precedence for table formatting is as follows:
1 Cells
2 Rows
3 Table
For example, if you set the background color for a single cell to blue, then set the background color of the entire table
to yellow, the blue cell does not change to yellow, since cell formatting takes precedence over table formatting.
Note: When you set properties on a column, Dreamweaver changes the attributes of the td tag corresponding to each cell
in the column.
About splitting and merging table cells
You can merge any number of adjacent cells—as long as the entire selection is a line or a rectangle of cells—to produce
a single cell that spans several columns or rows. You can split a cell into any number of rows or columns, regardless of
whether it was previously merged. Dreamweaver automatically restructures the table (adding any necessary
colspan
or
rowspan attributes) to create the specified arrangement.
In the following example, the cells in the middle of the first two rows have been merged into a single cell that spans
two rows.
Insert a table and add content
Use the Insert panel or the Insert menu to create a new table. Then, add text and images to table cells the same way
that you add text and images outside of a table.
Note: The Layout mode feature is deprecated as of Dreamweaver CS4 and later. Layout mode created page layouts using
layout tables, which are no longer recommended by Adobe. For more information on Layout mode and why it was
deprecated, see the
Dreamweaver Team Blog.
1 In the Design view of the Document window, place the insertion point where you want the table to appear.
Note: If your document is blank, you can place the insertion point only at the beginning of the document.
• Select Insert > Table.
• In the Common category of the Insert panel, click Table.