When someone mentions to create a table, the first thing come to my minds is  to use Excel. I love using Excel to make tables because it is very simple to use and has many great functions.

But, if I want to create a table on our web page, Excel won’t work on that way anymore. Someone may think to create a table on Excel, to save it as image and then to upload on the web page. 

Excuse me? Is it the right solution? What if you want to change the data? Upload a new table image again? Of course NO!

The best way is to use HTML create a table, so you can always update the data!

To create a simple HTML table, it only requires FOUR STEPS:

First Step: Brainstorm your table design and content

Before you create a table, you need to brainstorm some ideas about your table such as:

What is this table about? What is the purpose of creating this table?

What kinds of data do you need to collect?

How many rows and columns?

Do you need any images or hyperlinks?

Do you need to highlight any specific data?

my note

Second Step: Create a table draft on Excel

Once you get the idea, you can start to draft the table on the Excel or on a paper. This way can help you visualize the table, so you can get a clear path to write the right data inside the right HTML tag.

For example, I am going to create a Pokemon Chart includes “image”, “name”, “type” and “evolves to links”. Therefore, I fill in the table with all the relevant data.

Third Step: Understand basic html table tags

Under tag, you need to write<table></table>tag to indicate that there will be a table in this web page.

Then, inside the tag, you “draw” a row by using <tr></tr> tag. If you have one row, you only need one . Usually, a table contains multiple rows, you need to start a new tag once you finish one row.

Next, inside the row tag (), you need to put each cell inside<td></td> tag.

The following image is an basic HTML table example:

Final Step: Write the HTML elements and enter the data content

Now, you can enter HTML table tags and data content by following the rule which is described on the step three. 

I start to write “First Gen Pokemon Chart” as page title by using

tag. Then, I add the border=”1″ attitude inside<table>tag, so the table will show the borders on the web page.

The first row is table head, I enter “Image”, “Name”, “Type”, and “Evolves Into” inside each <th></th>tag (“th” stands for “Table Head”). If I want to bold each table head, I need to add<strong></strong>around each data content.

Once I finish the first row, I will enter <tr></tr> to start another row.

Inside the tag, I insert <img scr=”image URL”>inside the first tag, “Bulbasaur” on the second one, “Grass/Poison” on the third one, and add<a href= web address”> </a>around the “Ivysaur” on the last data tag.

By following the same rule, I finish the rest of HTML table elements. Then, I open it on the browser, it shows my chart on web page.

Each cell displays the way I want, and links are clickable. Based to my knowledge so far, I can only build a simple HTML table. I will continue to learn more HTML elements and hopefully could add more features in the future.