Re: Using Tables

> from what I have seen using tables is best for working with Images can
> anyone explain

Now that several people have said tables are good, a few words on how to use
them seem to be in order.

The info below is not the only way, but its a way that works for me most of
the time, we will probably hear from others how they do it - which is good.
There is no absolute right way, rather what experience has shown works in
different circumstances for different people.

Decide the size page you want.  I use a 620 pixel width to build most
tables.  Its a little crowded looking for the 640X480 video mode, but almost
perfect for 600X800 which most people are using now.  Some folks might have
trouble printing with a width of 620 but we are talking a small number of
viewers.   WebTV viewers may have to do a little more with the horizontal
positioning bar, but its still usable for them.

Three years ago everyone was recommending around 500 pixels to ensure good
printing, trouble is that looks bad in 800X600 mode and ridiculous in
1024X768.  Just too much unfilled screen territory.

You can alternately set the width of the table to a percentage rather than
pixels, trouble is that every screen mode formats differently. You have
little control over what it will look like and many advanced layout
techniques won't work.  If you use few  graphics and they are small, using
percentages can work, but these are very plain looking pages.  I abandoned
using percentages a long time ago except where the information is primarily
text.

Build the table with navigation in mind.  Do you want buttons at top or one
of the sides?  Buttons on the side is the most popular and works well with
the shape of the monitor being in a 5/4 ratio.  If doing side buttons,  you
need to set the column width where the buttons are slightly larger than the
button width.  Do not set the width of the other column(s) because it drives
browsers nuts if the math is incorrect. If I have a large image like a map
or product picture, I let that image size control the column's width.

Button size is important.  The bigger the buttons, the more time it takes to
download and the more screen size they take up.  On large sites they can
consume a lot of turf. Labels need to be short, yet meaningful.  This can
create a lot of head scratching.  Buttons also need to be recognizable as
buttons.  Nothing bugs me more than a button that is not a button, or a
graphic that is linked to another web page, that does not look like its a
link.
Why do so many of us intentionally make it hard to navigate???

Very Important!  Test your pages with both Netscape and IE.  If it works
well for both, your probably OK.  I also test using old versions of browsers
on another machine.  I shoot for near 100% viewability.

Well, this is a start, there are a lot more subtle things that you will
learn as you go along, hope this helps you get started with tables.

==============================
| Paul Wilson
| webgooru(at)gte.net
==============================

HTML: hwg-basics mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA