Examples of Web Site Design
Table layouts

Table based pages are the most common way to layout web pages

• Gives flexibility of layout for both text and graphics
• Multiple tables allows many small separated containers for information
• Gives ease of formatting the backgrounds and borders
• Can use small tables to build up complex background graphical designs

Illustration of different layouts. 

Few pages are built from one table divided into cells as below. Using this layout it is possible to merge and divide cells, colour margins and backgrounds.

It is however quite complex to achieve a more varied layout and achieve white space to separate the cells from each other. For this reason most designers use multiple cells.

Multiple Tables

Multiple Nested Tables

If you lay tables on top of each other, this is called 'nesting'.
This used to be discouraged as it slows down loading. However modern processing speeds make this irrelevant and the technique is now common.

Underlying table cells are often used for graphic images used for background The page can gradually be built up in stages adding and positioning new elements as you go along.

Using new tables over a background table without many cells means you don't have to cope with existing cells which hamper layout creativity

Mid-Cornwall Galleries