Handling Hyperlinks and Images in HTML - 2.10 Tables
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For a language that emerged from academia--a world steeped in data--it's not surprising to find that HTML (and now its progeny, XHTML) supports a set of tags for data tables that not only align your numbers, but can specially format your text, too.
Eight tags enable tables; including the <table> tag itself and a <caption> tag for including a description of the table. Special tag attributes let you change the look and dimensions of the table. You create a table row by row, putting between the table row (<tr>) tag and its end tag (</tr>) either table header (<th>) or table data (<td>) tags and their respective contents for each cell in the table (end tags, too, with XHTML). Headers and data may contain nearly any regular content, including text, images, forms, and even another table. As a result, you can also use tables for advanced text formatting, such as for multicolumn text and sidebar headers (see Figure 2-5). For more information, see Chapter 10.
Figure 2-5. Tables let you perform page layout tricks, too
2.11 Frames
Anyone who has had more than one application window open on her graphical desktop at a time can immediately appreciate the benefits of frames. Frames let you divide the browser window into multiple display areas, each containing a different document.
Figure 2-6 is an example of a frame display. It shows how the document window may be divided into independent windows separated by rule lines and scroll bars. What is not immediately apparent in the example, though, is that each frame displays an independent document, and not necessarily HTML or XHTML ones, either. A frame may contain any valid content that the browser is capable of displaying, including multimedia. If the frame's contents include a hypertext link that the user selects, the new document's contents, even another frame document, may replace that same frame, another frame's content, or the entire browser window.
Figure 2-6. Frames divide the browser's window into two or more independent document displays
Frames are defined in a special document, in which you replace the <body> tag with one or more <frameset> tags that tell the browser how to divide its main window into discrete frames. Special <frame> tags go inside the <frameset> tag and point to the documents that go inside the frames. [<frameset>, 11.3.1]
The individual documents referenced and displayed in the frame document window act independently, to a degree; the frame document controls the entire window. You can, however, direct one frame's document to load new content into another frame. In Figure 2-6, for example, selecting a Chapter hyperlink in the Table of Contents frame has the browser load and display that chapter's contents in the frame on the right. That way, the table of contents is always available to the user as he browses the collection. For more information on frames, see Chapter 11.
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 This article is excerpted from chapter two of HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, Sixth Edition, written by Chuck Musciano and Bill Kennedy (O'Reilly; ISBN: 0596527322). Check it out today at your favorite bookstore. Buy this book now.
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