Creating Tables
Front Page Cheat Sheet Hint No. 5
Check out the two examples below to see why a table is helpful and then continue to find out how to create your own using FrontPage Express.
1. Notice that this text wraps around the image. Sometimes you want your text to wrap, but some browsers will display the text differently, and the text may wrap in a funny place.
2.
Planning Your Table
Before you create a table, sketch a picture of what you think your page should look like. Once you know where you want images and text, you can decide how to draw your table. Tables consist of rows (horizontal) and columns (vertical), which, when crossed, create spaces called cells. An image or text can take up more than one row or column.
The above table has two columns across and three rows down. FrontPage has informed the browser that the first row will span three columns.
When drawing your table, remember that you don't need to stick to equal number squares. Begin by drawing a square around your image. Then break the page into cells using as few horizontal and vertical lines as possible-- the simpler the better.
You can see here that the text in the upper right and along the bottom will take more than one column. The lines are drawn all the way through the image to let you know that this table will need three rows and three columns.
Creating Your Table
Now you are ready to create your table. Go to Table Insert Table and enter the number of rows and columns that you will need. The other options to consider are the border, cellpadding and cellspacing. Table borders are shaded borders made up of the background color of your document. You can specify different colors for the border and the highlights and lowlights, but keep in mind that this feature is not supported on all browsers.
Cellpadding refers to the space around the content inside the cell. Cellspacing refers to the space between each cell. You may want to play around with these attributes to see what they do. Finally, you can specify the tables width either to a fixed size in pixels or a percentage of the screen. When you want to change these attributes, right-click on the table and choose Table Properties.
We created a table with three rows and two columns.
Once you have your table drawn, you can click inside any of the cells to insert text and images.
Inserting Images and Text
To insert text, click inside the cell and begin typing. Once your text is done, you can highlight it and change the properties. To insert an image, click inside the cell, go to the Insert menu option, and choose Image. If the image is on your hard drive, select From File and click Browse to find the image. Double-click on the image and you will see it appear in the table. You may see the table cells shift a bit. Don't worry about this until you have inserted all your images and text.
Customizing Your Table
Altering the number of rows and columns that each cell spans can be tricky. Let's say your table has three rows and two columns, and you want the black cell rows to only be one cell.
Select the row, go to Table, and choose Merge Cells. You can also change the way the cells hold their content. Right-click inside a cell and choose Cell Properties. Under Layout, change the vertical and horizontal alignment of the contents. Minimum width lets you change the width of the cell in pixel width or a percentage (keep in mind that if you have assigned the table a fixed width, your cells should add up to the total).
Choosing a custom background will color the cell, allowing for more control in design. You can even select a background image, though older browsers do not support this feature and your image will not show up. Just like the table border, you can choose different colors for the highlighting and lowlighting of each cell. Once again, this is not supported in all browsers.
