More Table Attributes

OK, it's </playtime> ... LOL!

A very handy way to positioning a block of type or image on a page is by nesting tables. Tables can be nested, or placed inside of each other and as many as you want. This page is a good example of nested tables. The entire page itself is set up in a table. Each of our little blocks of code are also set up as tables. But these other blocks are within the table that the entire page is set up within. It gives you great control over the placement of text, or images.

Mentioning text or images in the preceding paragraph brings to mind that you need to understand that tables can hold text, or images. You can have a table with nothing inside of it but an image. If that is the best way to get that image exactly where you want it, then go for it.

When nesting tables be sure that each new table ends itself out. The </table> must be present for each table. Further, each nested table must be ended before you can get yourself back to the previous table.

That should make some sense to you. The only way to get fluent with this coding is to do it. So now that you've read through the table section launch NoteTab and have a go at it. You can copy and paste if you wish, I don't blame you a bit, but do set up your own pages to experiment and view. It's really easy with NoteTab, just click on that icon to view your page!

OK, now check this out!

Here's what it will look like:

Anyone for checkers?

To type out tables likes this, or for that matter any code at all that is the same, I use search and replace, or copy and paste. It's a lot easier! Matter of fact I write code with search and replace as often as possible. It's much easier than typing out page after page of code, and it's much more accurate also. For instance, let's say I am setting up a site and every page has a table for the main page, and a navigation column on the left, like this eBook has. If I get my thoughts together first, and then type each page with something like ...

$$TABLE AND NAVIGATION GO HERE$$

... at the start of every page, I can later do a search and replace through NoteTab and put the entire table and navigation into place with one fell swoop! By using something like the above replace string, with the $$ before and after it, I'm reasonably assured that the same text with $$ etc. won't appear somewhere else within my documents and I won't wind up with a table and navigation in the middle of a paragraph of content.

There are also ways to get all the headings, navigation column or anything else that shows up frequently throughout a site to automatically fill the page using a cgi script or a virtual include. We'll get into that later in this tutorial. Using a navigation bar as an example, you could have one file with all that information in it and call it out through a script to show up on every page. When you need to edit or update the navigation bar you only need do it to one file, not the entire site.