Microsoft FrontPage: Building A Web Site---Tables
Table
Uses
On web pages, tables can serve many
functions:
- Page layout
- Displaying information in formatted
tabular form
- Adding background color and borders
to blocks of text
Creating a Table
A quick way to create a small table is
using the table button on the standard toolbar. Click the button and
drag the mouse over the grid, highlighting the cells that should appear
on the table. When the table size has been selected, click the mouse
button again.
Table
Properties
Select Table|Properties|Table
from the menu border to modify the table\'s properties.
- Alignment refers to the
table\\'s position on the page, not the alignment of the text within
the table. Choose "Center" to center the table on the page, or
select left, right, or justify. Default is usually left alignment.
- Cell padding is the number
of pixels between the text and the cell walls.
- Cell spacing is the number
of pixels between the table cells.
- Specify width sets the width
of the table by a distinct number of pixels or by a percentage of
the screen width.
- Specify height is usually
not necessary to set since the height depends on the number of rows
in the table.
- Border size indicates the
depth of the table border. The dotted lines on the table above are
shown only as a visual reference of the table structure, but since
this table\'s border is set to 0 pixels, no borders will show on a
web page:
- Border color will change the
color of the borders on the table. The MSIE and Netscape browsers
read this property differently. MSIE changes all the border to the
solid color, while Netscape keeps the three-dimensional quality of
the table and only changes the outer border of the table. Since
FrontPage is a Microsoft product, you will always see the MSIE
version when constructing a web page in FrontPage.
Cell
Properties
Select Tables|Properties|Cell
from the menu bar or Cell Properties from the shortcut menu to
change the properties of the table cells. Begin by highlighting the
cells whose properties will be changed.
- Horizontal alignment is
defaulted to the left side of the table cell. Change this attribute
to center or right-justify the text within the table cell.
- Vertical alignment is
defaulted at middle as shown in the example below. Since the text in
the right-hand column cover more than one line and the left-hand
cells do not, that text is centered vertically in the cell. Select
"top" or "bottom" to override this default setting.
- Setting rows spanned and
columns spanned is better achieved by a method explained below.
- Specify width and specify
height will set the width and height of the cells. Percentages
refer to the portion of the table, not a percentage of the entire
screen.
- Select Header cell to
automatically bold and center the content of the cell.
- Border color is a setting
that is not read by Netscape. This changes the color of the cell
border only when viewed with MSIE. Note the red borders on the cells
in the top row of the MSIE example:
Light and dark border settings will additionally be read by MSIE but
not by Netscape.
Inserting Rows and Columns
Quickly add rows or columns to a table
by placing the cursor in the cell the new row or column will be adjacent
to, right-click the mouse to access the popup shortcut menu, and select
Insert Row or Insert Column. Another method is to use the
Insert Rows or Columns dialog box:
- Place the cursor in a cell where
the new row or column will be adjacent to.
- Select Table|Insert|Rows or
Columns from the menu bar.
- To insert a row, select Rows
and enter the Number of Rows. Then select the Location
of the new row by selecting Above selection or Below
selection from where you placed the cursor in step 1.
- Click Columns to insert a
new column and the choices will change. Enter the Number of
columns and the Location left or right of the selected
point.
- Click OK.
Spanning Cells
There is often the need to create a cell
than spans rows or columns, such as the a title at the top of a table.
This example will begin with the same table already used on this page.
- Insert a new row to the top of the
table.
- Type the text of the row that will
be spanned across the columns by typing into the first cell and
highlight the cells
- Select Table|Merge Cells
from the menu bar or right-click with the mouse and select Merge
Cells from the popup shortcut menu..
- Center the text in the cell by from
the Cell Properties window and deselect the cell.
- To split the cell again, select the
cell and choose Table|Split Cell from the menu bar.
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