In this example, the "paper" table that contains the light beige texture is set to be 90% of the monitor's width instead of a fixed 650 pixels across. It looks much the same as the first example to viewers in 800x600 resolution but with this format, high-resolution monitors will also see the same proportion of paper width to desk blotter. Because more text can fit across that width, those visitors are likely to see a shorter paper than other viewers, so they will have less scrolling to do.

When you use proportional measurements for tables and your visitor chooses to reduce his window size, the paper width will shift to maintain a 90% proportion across the screen. This is great if you have mainly text on your page; let the computer wrap it within the space available as it changes. It's not so great if you have carefully inserted illustrations that are meant to fall in a set place within the text. Then it's better to choose absolute widths in pixels for your tables, so your layout will be consistent no matter what the screen resolution.

It's a matter of style, so you can go either route when using a one-cell table.