Home

1. Introduction

2. Basics review

3. WIDTH

4. VALIGN

5. BORDER

6. BGCOLOR

7. CELLSPACING

8. CELLPADDING

9. ALIGN

10. Table manners

11. Editors

12. Summary

13. Exercises

Classes home

HTML Info home

Editors

So how much code do you have to know and how much can you let your editor decide for you? This report looks at table coding in several editors for Windows 95.

First I set up a one row by two column table was set up in each editor, using whatever default values were supplied. Then I tried to drag the divider between the columns with the mouse.

AOLPress 2.0

This freeware editor produces table code from a small dialog box. Resulting code was appropriate:

   <TABLE BORDER CELLPADDING="2">
      <TR>
         <TD>
         <TD>
      </TR>  
   </TABLE>

After the table was generated, the center divider could not be moved with the mouse. Most advanced table attributes could not be entered from dialog boxes or menus, either - they had to be hand-coded.

Dreamweaver 1.2a

Dreamweaver's initial dialog box is very small, with an odd default with of 75%.

Resulting code is appropriate.

   <table border="1" width="75%"> 
      <tr>
         <td>
         <td>
      </tr>
   </table>

After the table is generated, a floating Properties box appears with the rest of the table attributes.

After the table is generated, the divided can be moved with the mouse. If the table has been defined in percentages, then divider moves record percentage-based changes.

FrontPage 98 (more specifically, FrontPage v.3.02.926)

FrontPage 98 has two options for tables: Draw or Insert. Draw allows the users to sketch the outline of a table with a pencil tool, and have the appropriate pixel-exact specified heights and widths coded. If there is a use for this besides generating ridiculous pixel-exact designs, I can't think of what it is.

Insert creates a table from a smaller dialog box. Resulting code for 2 columned table is accurate.

   <table border="1" width="100%"> 
      <tr> 
         <td width="50%">  
         <td width="50%"> 
      </tr> 
   </table>

After the table was generated, the column divider could be moved with the mouse. Like Dreamweaver, if the table was defined in percentages, moves were recorded in percentages.

Netscape Page Composer 4.03

Tables in Page Composer are generated from a rich dialog box.

The code it generated below has a problem. Although "Equal column widths" was checked in the dialog box, Page Composer did not generate the standard <td width="50%""> code, so columns would not hold equal width as content was added.

At the moment I don't know what COLS=2 is - a Netscape extension?

   <TABLE BORDER COLS=2 WIDTH="100%">
      <TR>
         <TD></TD>
         <TD></TD>
      </TR>
   </TABLE>

After the table was generated, the divider could not be moved with the mouse; instead, table attributes needed to be changed.