This is the left hand side of the page, where people often put lists of links to other parts of the site. It is in a TD with a given, small width, which often fits in with the background image. Here that width is 150 pixels.

to somewhere
to somewhere
to somewhere
to somewhere
to somewhere
to somewhere
to somewhere
to somewhere
to somewhere
to somewhere
to somewhere

Page layout using tables

The page as a whole is put in a table whose width is 100% (or sometimes a specified number of pixels like 580 or 750, if the whole page depends on graphics). The page has one row (TR) and it's important to have this valign="top" so that the left and right parts both start at the top of the page. As this page is not graphic, the right hand TD (this one) is not given a fixed number of pixels.

Instead of using a number of pixels, it is also possible to use a percentage for the width of the left and right parts of the screen. This has advantages and disadvantages - the important point is that when you do this kind of page design you should always test it well with different widths of your browser window to check that it behaves reasonably.

This is the rest of the page. You can do anything you like in the rest of the page, and it will stay in this bit. Usually, as here, if tables are used for page layout, they will not have borders, and quite possibly they will have no cell spacing either.