A previous rule of thumb, "Don't use unnecessary attributes," applies to tables as well. Take a look at the following code and see how many unnecessary attributes you can find:
What code is extraneous? Lots. Here's what can be removed:
WIDTH=300 isn't needed because the two columns within this table are defined as 200 and 100 pixels wide, which obviously add up to 300. Defining the <TD> widths makes stating the overall table width unnecessary.
Various occurrences of ALIGN=left VALIGN=top aren't necessary because cell content alignment is already specified in the <TR>s, and those alignments carry down to the <TD>s within those <TR>s.
In the second row, the <TD>'s WIDTH=200 and WIDTH=100 aren't needed because the widths were already specified in the first row. By definition, the first column of the second row must be the same width as the first column of the first row, so there's no need to use WIDTH again.
Three instances of BGCOLOR=yellow can go away because the entire contents of the nested table inherit the background color of the cell that contains that table.
So the final, cleaned-up code looks like what you see below. It does exactly the same thing, but saves 239 bytes in file size.
