Tables are a great tool for laying out web pages.
You can put just about anything exactly on your page where you want to have it. You can add color to parts of your page. You can create columns of text or navigation bars, like on this page. You can split up images, and recombine them to create a button bar, or put plain text in the middle of it. If you are unfamiliar with HTML you may want to have a look at the HTML tutorial first.