To define a Table, we will use two tags.  The opening table tag (i.e. <table>) and the closing table tag (i.e. </table>) - The following example defines a very basic table.  No Rows and No Columns.  This basic table will not be recognized by browsers as the table is not complete without at least one Row and one Column, however this is the first step to defining a table:

Let's define some attributes to the table to define the width of the table, background color, cell spacing, space within cells and border size.   Each of these attributes will define what the table will look like in the browser.   Each of these attributes may also be

Let's now define the width of the table by adding the width parameter to the example. Note: If you omit the width the default used by browsers will be the width of the browser window used for displaying the web page:

In the above example we have set the table width to be 43% - A Percentage is based upon the window width of the browser displaying the web page.  you can be more specific and define the table to be X pixels wide by omitting the Percentage sign.  The following example shows the width to be 43 pixels wide instead of 43% of the Window Width:

You can also define the height of the table in percent of window height or in pixels high.  The following example shows defining the height to be 70% of the window height (Note: Not all browsers support the height attribute)

Now, lets define the Border width.  This defines the outlining border for each cell and how thick it should be.  A Value of 0 will mean no border is to be visible in the browser.  In our example we will use a standard border width of 1:

Next we will define the spacing of cells from each other.  The Cell spacing attributes is used to define this as shown in the following example:

Let's now define the Cell Padding.  This is the amount of spacing to be used within each cell.  It tells the browser how much space to provide between the cell wall and the text and/or graphics within the cell.

You can also define the Table Border Color.  This color is set on the outside border of the table.  In Microsoft Internet Explorer it will also effect the borders surrounding all cells.  We have define the following example border color to be Teal:

The following two attributes are only valid when displayed in Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.x and will override the bordercolor attribute defined in the previous example.  The first is to define a Dark border color and the second is to define a Light Border color.  This is to provide the ability to create a shadow effect from the Table.  In the following example we have defined Navy as the Dark Color and Silver as the light color:

Well, that about sums up defining a table. Let's move on to Defining Rows and Cells.  We will expand on the above example:

Defining a Table
Defining a Row
Defining a Column