Datasheet
Reviewing old-school designs
Although CSS is by far the best option for creating Web designs today, many
sites on the Web were created using tables to control the layout, like the one
shown in Figure 1-3. Old-school sites like this one were created using the
HTML table tag. To help you appreciate how this page was created, I altered
the original design to display the table borders, although most designers turn
off table borders when using them to create layouts like this.
Because you can merge and split table cells, you can control the layout of a
page, positioning text and images more or less where you want them. And if
you set the table border to 0 (instead of 10 as I did here to show you the bor-
ders), you can hide the table so that it doesn’t interfere with the design.
In Chapter 7, you find an introduction to Dreamweaver’s Table features and
tips for creating accessible table designs by including the table header tag in
all your tables. You can even combine CSS with tables to create more stream-
lined designs.
Figure 1-3:
In the old
days, the
only way
you could
create a
complex
Web page
design was
by using a
HTML table
like the one
shown
here to
control the
placement
of text and
images.
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Chapter 1: The Many Ways to Design a Web Page
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