Photoshop and Dreamweaver Tutorial for Creating an Expandable / Stretchable, Rounded-Corners Table To Place Your Content in

Have you ever wondered how other web designers have created those neat tables with rounded-cornered borders that expand as content is added within them? The Ones that look like the table below.

If I were to type into this table you would see that the table's border expands with it. Look below, this is the same exact table:

This is the same exact table as the table above. This stretchable table expands as I type. The tops border and bottom border are images. The entire middle of this table is a background image that is being tiled behind our text. We have a table with 1 row and 3 columns pasted over the background image.

No. This table isn't magic, it is actually quite simple to create if you follow this tutorial carefully.

How to Create the Amazing Stretchable Table with Rounded Corners

(1) We are going to set the background color to #E9DAB3. This will be our background color. Click on the Toolbar's Foreground color square, this is the box that is circled in red below.

Photoshop's Color Picker will open up. Nex to where you see the "#", type in E9DAB3. This will be our background color. Obviously after this tutorial, you can change the background color to your needs, but for the purpose of this tutorial, please use this color. Click the 'OK' button to select the color.

Click on the 2-sided curvy arrow next to these color squares to swith the foreground color to the background color.

(2) Open up Photoshop and Create a New Document by Going to the Top Menu and Clicking on File > New as shown below.

The 'New Document' Window Appears. For both the Width box and the Height box, type in '500' For Contents, click on the 'Background Color' radio button. This will open up a new document the background color that we selected as the document's background color.

(3) Now we are going to start making the rectangle with rounded corners. This will be what our expandable table will be created from. Go to Photoshop's Toolbar and Select the 'Rounded Rectangle Tool'. If this tool isn't present, hold down your mouse on the icon 2 above the magnifying glass icon (look below) and a little screen will open up, from there you can select the 'Rounded Rectangle Tool'.

(3) On the very top of Photoshop you should see a toolbar that opens up that looks like the below image. When you find it, type in '15' for Radius, no style, and 'white' for the color.

The radius is to tell Adobe Photoshop how much of a curve you want on your rounded corners. The lower the radius number the more that the rounded cornered rectangle will look like it has corners ....and the higher the number, the more your rounded rectangle square will look like a circle.
Here is the difference. This one has a radius of 60 and this one has a radius of 5

(4) Click on the Photoshop Screen and drag down to the size that you want, making sure to leave some room around the borders for the glowing edges that we create later.

This is what our rounded rectangle looks like so far.

(5) Is your 'Layers' window open yet? If not, go to the top menu bar and click on 'Windows' > 'Layers'. Now the below window will open up. You will see a new layer above the 'Background' Layer. Double click on the name of the layer, and rename the layer 'Resizable Table'.

An alternate way of renaming this layer is to click on the little triangle that is pointing towards the right and a new window will open, drag down and click on 'Layer Properties'. Here you will have the option to choose another name for the layer.

(5) You should still have your 'Layers' window open. There should be 2 squares in the 'Resizable Table' layer. Now you should right click on the square that is on the left of the 'linked' icon. (it might be on the right in your Photoshop) A window pops up...you should drag down and click select 'Blending Options...'.

A new window opens up called 'Layer Style'. Click on Outer Glow so that it is 'checked' and highlighted in below, like the picture below. Now you should set the Blend Mode to 'Normal', Opacity to '30', Noise to '0', Technique to 'Softer', Spread to '44', Size to '16', and Range to '100'. Then click 'OK'. When you finish this tutorial, I suggest that you come back here and create your own special effects with this tool. The images that you can create with the 'Outer Glow' and the other 'Layer Styles' are limitless. Try it out when you get a chance (although I have a feeling that you already have in the past).

(5) I suggest that you hide the path so that you can see the way the rectangle is looking without the annoying path showing up. This might already be hidden on your settings, but if it isn't, go to the top Photoshop menu, and click on 'View' and drag down to 'Show' and if 'Target Path' has a 'checkmark' next to it, select it so that this path will be hidden. (A check next to an option, means that it is on.)

This is What the Rectangle looks like so far.

(6) Now it is time to slice and cut up our rectangle so that we can bring these pictures over to Dreamweaver and eventually the web. Go to the Photoshop 'Toolbar' and select the 'Rectangle Marquee' tool pictured below

At the top of your Photoshp screen, you will see a box that says 'Feather' (pictured below), make sure that it says '0 px'. If not, type in '0'.

(7) Drag and select part of the top part of the recgangle. You need to get the entire rounded part of the corners selected, like I did below. You don't need to select further than where the shadow (glowing edges) stop.

After you have selected the top portion of the rectangle, go to the top Photoshop menu and click on 'Edit' > 'Copy Merged'.

Now go to Top Photoshop Menu and click on 'File' > 'New'. A new Photoshop window will open the same size windown as the picture you just copied. Go to the top Photoshop menu and click on 'Edit' > 'Paste'. Now the image you just copied is pasted in a new Photoshop Document. Now Click on 'File' > 'Save for the Web' in order to save and optimize your web graphic properly for the web.

The 'Save for the Web' Window will open up. Under Settings, scroll down to 'GIF' and for colors choose 16. Click on 'Save' to save your images to a folder.

Save your file as 'tabletop', 'save as type' should already have 'gif' selected. Hit Save.

You can either do the same thing again for the bottom border of the table or you can simply flip the canvas (image) over. Go to the top Photoshop menu, click on 'Image' > 'Rotate Canvas' > 'Flip Canvas Vertical'.

Save the bottom this image as 'bottomtable.gif'

(7) Now we are going to save the background image that will be the center of our table. This will be the part of the table that allows us to expand it without losing the border's continuity. On the Photoshop toolbar, click on the 'rectangle marquee tool' again. On the top of Photoshop's screen, you will see the below options appear. For Style, scroll down and select 'Fixed Size'. for width, type in '455' and for Height, type in '1'.

Below is what this will look like after you type in these options.

Now you should select 'Copy Merged' again, by going to the top Photoshop Menu and clicking on 'Edit' > 'Copy Merged'.

Open up a new Photoshop Document and Paste it in by clicking on 'Edit' > 'Paste'. And this is what it will look like (below).

Save for web as 'middle.gif'.

(8) Now it is finally time for Dreamweaver. Create a New Dreamweaver Document by Clicking on the top Dreamweaver menu and selection 'File' > 'New'. You will be taken to the 'New Document' Window. Select 'Basic Page' under Category and 'HTML' under Basic Page.

(9) Go to the top menu bar of Dreamweaver and click on 'Modify' >'Page Properties'.

A new window will open up, where it says 'Background Color' type in the same background color as our Photoshop document used..."#E9DAB3".

(10) Now it is time to insert our table. Go to the top Dreamweaver menu bar and click on 'Insert' > 'Table'.

The 'Table' window will open up. Enter '3' for Rows, '1' for Columns, and '455' for Pixels. Make sure that the cell padding, border, and cell spacing are all '0'.

(11) Now it is time to save our Dreamweaver file, otherise Dreamweaver will give you an warning message when you try to add images. Go to the top menu bar and click on 'File' > 'Save as'.

The 'Save' window opens up. Where it says 'File Name', type in expandabletables.html.

(12) Now click in your table within the first row as shown below. Now go to the top Dreamweaver menu bar and click on 'Insert' > 'Image'.

The 'Insert Image' window will open up. Find the image that you saved from Photoshop, called 'toptable.gif'. Clickc on the 'OK' button.

Now click in the table's bottom row. Repeat the above step to find the image called 'bottomtable.gif'. Now your table will look like this.

(13) Now for the tricky part of this tutorial, the part that most people don't know how to do. For the middle of the table we are going to use the 455 pixel x 1 pixel image that we created in Photoshop called 'middle.gif'. We are giong to tile 'middle.gif' within the table's middle row. If this table gets larger, this image will repeat itself and expand from top to bottom and appear as if that 1 pixel wide image is as big or as small as the table gets.

Is your 'Properties' toolbar opened on the bottom of your Dreamweaver screen? If now, go to the top Dreamweaver menu bar and click on 'Windows' > 'Properties'. The Properties bar will now open. If there is a triangle pointing downwards at the far right of the 'Properties' bar, then click on it in order to expand that bar further. The arrow will point upwards if you do this correctly.

(13) Now click in the table's middle row and then find the folder next to the 'Bg' as shown below. This will find an image to use as the background. You should then find the image 'middle.gif' and insert it.

(14) Your table is starting to come together. Look at it, it looks just like the first image that I showed you in the beginning of the tutorial.

(15) Now all that is left to do is to insert a second table within the middle row. This will allow the text to stay within the table as you type. Otherwise, the text will go outside the border walls. So put your cursor in the table's middle row and go to Dreamweaver's top menu bar and click on 'Insert' > 'Table'. When the 'Table' window opens, create '3' columns, '1' row, and a width of '100%'. You will see 2 draggable column borders. Drag these towards the outside of the table. You can drag them as close or far away to the border as you want. It depends on how much padding you want around your text. This is what these border columns look like (below).

That's it!! You've created your very own expandable table with rounded corners.

Here is the Code if you don't have dreamweaver:

<table width="450" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td align="center"><img src="toptable.gif" width="455" height="39"></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center" background="middle.gif"><div align="center"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td width="7%"> </td> <td width="87%"><p> <p><p></p> </td> <td width="6%"> </td> </tr> </table> </div></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center"><img src="bottomtable.gif" width="455" height="39"></td> </tr> </table>