During the 13 September class, we looked at some of the capabilities of XHTML tables.  The basics are pretty simple:  a table contains rows (<tr>), and row contain cells (<td>).  The cells contain content — usually text (paragraphs, lists, etc.) or images.  Where things start getting complex is with tables that have cells that span multiple rows or columns, or with nested tables.

I’ve posted some code samples on the class web site at the slides page. A few samples are very simple demonstrations of row and column spanning; you might want to play with these to experiment with different combinations.  I’ve also posted a solution to the “Nova Gazette” problem we worked on.
Remember that this was a complex layout, designed to look like a newspaper. This file contains two possible extreme solutions: one done completely without nested tables, relying strictly on row and column spanning; and the other one done with multiple nested tables but no spanning. Which is best? Probably something in between.