A few well-developed ideas is preferable to a paragraph that mentions 100 uses of the element, but does not explain any of them. Focus on what makes your element interesting or unusual. Personalize your site. Copy and paste your page into MS Word and run the spell and grammar check or at least run them through the spell checker in MS FrontPage Editor. It is generally preferable if the homepage does not require a lot of scrolling.
Tables are very versatile for page layout purposes.
The color of the table background can be different from the page background. In fact, you can change the background of each individual cell.