Nested Table Help

I have not really worked with complex tables. When I take a look at websites source code sometimes I am amazed at the use of nested tables. Does any one have any advice on how to learn how to use complex nested tables? Or is it all experience? Thanks

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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana,Arial,Helvetica">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by dbmargo:
I have not really worked with complex tables. When I take a look at websites source code sometimes I am amazed at the use of nested tables. Does any one have any advice on how to learn how to use complex nested tables? Or is it all experience? Thanks [/quote]

As you say, complex nested tables are nothing more than tables in tables, i.e. putting another table in one of the parent table cells.
It takes some experimenting about what the output will be, but it is very, I mean, VERY important to properly nest the tags, because IE is very mild to this, but NN unforgiving!
So yes, just try and experience a lot. I think it is good to do the basic NOTEPAD HTML composing to get familiar with what you are doing.

Have fun, Peter

worth noting a lot of these will have generated by scripts looping, so where it looks like you have hundreds of tables all nesting within each other, whoever wrote will have (for example) created three tables and placed two within or part within a loop, thus when you look at the source there 'appears' to be all these nested tables. Go have a look at http://www.reedon.net/ this has a lot of nested tables, but the majority are generated through MySQL queries being drawn into tables within tables cells.
If you are going to write them yourself however, at the start of each table, table row and table cell, indent and as you close off go back, that way you can (try) and keep track of where you are,
hope that helps


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cheers


[This message has been edited by timbo (edited January 26, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by timbo (edited January 26, 2000).]

I am one of those that use nested tables to a great extent. While CSS is great for positioning I have over 40% of my users from WebTV (why? I have no idea) and CSS is out of the question. Anyway, using includes, either SSI or PHP (much easier if you have access) you can break the tables up a bit making it easier to keep track of all those tags. Best advice: Make sure you test everything with Netscape! As PAV says Netscape is VERY unforgiving when it comes to tables. Forget your </table> and it won't display. The upside to this is that if you do everything right, NS will display perfectly. IE being flexible can sometimes mean that the display is more unpredictable.

I don't know whether its worth adding this but the way I deal with complex tables is to do it first in some sort of visual editor (personally I use dreamweaver none of that Microsoft rubbish). Then get down to the nitty gritty with a html editor like (Cute HTML, anything more than that starts mucking around with your code) and code my socks of until it looks right.

Lastly as has been mentioned above several times which I would like to say again, I code to Netscape. You pretty much can not go wrong by using this in the initial stages. Once thats done, tidy any browser incompatibilities.

Well thats my two pence worth..

Falcon