table driven html (idea)

In my opinion table driven html design affords the coder a great deal of power over the look, feel, and structure of an html document. Tables in html have been often missunderstood, and sometimes dubbed "evil." When used correctly tables can also aid liquid designand make a page viewable at almost any resolution.

The basics of html tables are simple enough, but table driven code tends to get a bit messy after the second and third nested tables, so it is good practice to indent the nested code. The following is an example:

<table width="200" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" border="0">
	<tr>
		<td bgcolor="#999999">
		<table width="198" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
			<tr>
				<td bgcolor="#ffffff" height="100">
				this is just some text
				</td>
			</tr>
		</table>
		</td>
	</tr>
</table>

The previous code renders this pretty table similar to those found at customize.org and deskmod.com thanks to xtreme for the great tip! Both sites are great examples of liquid design that uses both fixed width tables and realtive widths (ie 90%, 50%, etc.)