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If you are new to web design, and have perhaps designed pages for printing, you might expect to be able to put text and graphics on a web page and have them stay where you put them. Web pages don't work like that - they are fluid, and change size and shape with monitor resolution and resizing of the browser window. It's a bit like painting on a puddle! To hold everything in place, you have a number of choices:
If you don't use any of those options - well, here's what happens. Click here to open a window with some text and graphics placed 'loose' on the page: try resizing the mini-window: not good! |
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| The grid is, I believe, unique to Golive and it mimics a regular page - you place your text and images, they stay put. It's incredibly easy to use, very ingenious and may well be exactly what you need. However, all it really does is make tables for you, behind the scenes - it's not different from tables, just takes some of the work out for you. As you progress, you may find disadvantages (for instance, you can't make a grid fill the browser window side to side however it is resized) or you might just want to know how to make your own tables, so you have greater control and flexibility. | |
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Css - many argue that this is how web pages should be designed, that tables were never meant for displaying the whole content of a page - this may well be true but, in my opinion, not yet, given the discrepancies among browsers / version of browsers / platforms and how they interpret css. That leaves the subject of this tutorial. |
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The basics of the basicsFind the table object in your object palette (see opposite) and drop it onto your page, or double click it to put a table at the insertion point if your cursor is blinking at the right place on the page. Getting the right number of rows and columns The basic table that appears has three rows and three columns. If you know in advance how many rows and columns you want, hold down the Command (apple) key - Control key on Windows - as you select the table object - while it's still on the objects palette - and with a little practice, you can pull it out from the bottom right hand corner until it has the number of rows and columns you want. Let go and drop the table on the page. To add rows and columns, you can hold down the Command (apple) key again - Command on Windows - and drag the table out to the desired size on the page. In this case, you drag from the right hand edge to add columns, or the bottom edge to add rows. |
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Please note, as far as Mac OS is concerned, the manual is wrong on this - it tells you to use Command-Shift to drag the table bigger, but the shift key is optional. If you are using Windows, you'll have to experiment to see whether you need the shift key or not. |
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| Or you can use the inspector - select the table (the cursor will acquire a little square as you hover over the top right hand corner to show you have caught the whole table) - and specify the number of rows and columns. |
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| Or select a cell and add a row above or below, or a column to the right or left:
It works just as well if you select a row or column - hover over the top of a column to select it (the cursor turns into a small downward-pointing arrow), click to select, then use the inspector to add a column to the right or left. Same with rows - hover the cursor over the left hand edge of a row, watch for the right-pointing arrow, then click that row and use the inspector to add or delete rows above or below. |
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| To centre your table on the page, select it and hit this button: |  |
| On to the new and excellent table palette to select a row, column, cell or table - this palette gets its own page ... page 2 | |
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