Building an Image Gallery in a 3D HTML Table

If you haven't done so already, you should read my earlier article on building a 3D HTML table because I will only be going over the basics on that topic here.

I will also show you how you can maximize and restore each picture in the gallery. I use a technique I call the layer method to do this; you can read my article on that topic at the link. Since I will only be summarizing the method here, you will want to read and understand that article before reading this one.

3D HTML Table Summary

The HTML specification does not give an HTML element for a 3D table. There are several ways of designing a 3D table. The design here is the one I prefer.

My design for a 3D table is as follows: you have the normal 2D table. Each cell in the table has only one element, which is a one-row table (a table with only one row). It is the cells of the one-row tables that can take arbitrary content. Each one-row table must have an ID. The following diagram illustrates how I give the IDs.

T00, T01, T02, T03, T04

T10, T11, T12, T13, T14

T20, T21, T22, T23, T24

T30, T31, T32, T33, T34

T40, T41, T42, T43, T44

T50, T51, T52, T53, T54

Each ID begins with a T, followed by the number of the 2D row to which the one-row table belongs, and then the number of the 2D column to which the one-row table belongs. You should imagine each of the one-row tables to be going into the page.

If the number of cells of the one-row tables are the same, then you have a cuboid, which is a regular 3D table. If they are not the same, then you have an irregular 3D table. In this article I only consider cases of regular 3D tables.