What is wrong with my code

[stargal98]

It seems like every time my inc. file has a table in it, this (http://www.ohiowholesale.com/asp/newhelp.asp) happens (that spacing is not intentional). Here is my code for the include file (http://www.ohiowholesale.com/asp/newhelp_inc.inc) (must click 'edit' then 'view source'. I'm still ironing out some code and punctuation, etc. for this page, so errors in the text may exist.
Thanks!

[Fang]

A host of validation errors:
Where is the tr tag?
<table width='770' border='3' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' >
<td colspan=2><img src='../siteimages/topportion2.jpg' border='0' USEMAP="#topportion2"></td>

Interesting double quote matching error in COORDS
<AREA SHAPE="RECT" HREF="http://www.ohiowholesale.com/asp/catalogs.asp" ALT=”Catalogs" COORDS="454,77, 534,94">

No Doctype decaration
No charset defined
Mixture of singe and double quotes used throughout.
Table errors - don't use tables for layout, use css

When your page validates the gap will probably disappear.

[stargal98]

Aha! Our webmaster wrote the code the page fits into, and I guess that is why things aren't going well. I've been working at easing CSS into our web plans in the last few months, and I really hope to make the leap soon. Thank you!

[Fang]

Look no tables ... was 33kb is 21kb
There are a couple of problems:
Numeric ids are not allowed.
Banner/header img is not wide enough to allow for navigation links at bottom of page.
Log in needs some layout work

[stargal98]

wow, thanks! After looking at this code, I see how nice and clean it is. I hope I can persuade the powers that be to take a closer look at this type of coding. Thanks, again! :-)

[spufi]

Originally posted by stargal98
wow, thanks! After looking at this code, I see how nice and clean it is. I hope I can persuade the powers that be to take a closer look at this type of coding. Thanks, again! :-)

Ease of updating, and maintenance is going to be the biggest things. Once you have all your CSS defined and linked externally, it will make changing the layout of your site many many times easier than using a table based layout that doesn't use CSS. A couple examples of sites that use the same HTML, but use a different externally linked CSS file to produce a much different layout.

http://www.rickbull.co.uk/styles/

Click on the links in the "Presentation" menu.
http://www.meyerweb.com/

Pick one of the 40+(and growing) designs.
http://www.mezzoblue.com/zengarden/alldesigns/

I'm currently working on a complete redesign of my own site and I'm going for this same type of idea.