ables are handy little tools that can help you arrange the stuff on your Web page. They're rectangular grids that you can create with HTML, letting you put pictures and words and colors just about wherever you want.

The beauty of tables is that they're flexible. You can make them spread out and take up the whole page, or you can use them to force the page into a certain shape. The choice is yours. You're in control.

The first step to understanding tables is knowing what shapes you can make with them. They have to be square or rectangular. Here's a basic one:

You can also have something a little weirder looking:

Basically, if you can draw it in a grid, and it's not shaped like an L, you can put it in a table. And if you understand what you can and can't do right from the beginning, you'll save yourself lots of hassle in the long run.