I'm new to html design, so I'm putting together my first pages. I started with a table in which everything else would be encapsulated, so I set the 100% width yet when I change the backround color and view the page in my browser, there is still some white on the sides, so its clearly not taking up 100% of the page. How can I fix this?
Your table probably has cellspacing or cellpadding at the default values or a value > 0 but you should use a div rather than a table in most instances if you are trying to control your page. Can you post a link to your example?
like sarahk said, it is recomended that you use a div rather than a table to control your page. anyway, if you still decide to use a table make sure all cellspacing and cellpadding are set to "0" and also you can create a stylesheet and add these lines body { padding:0px; margin:0px; background: black; } at the "background" you can place whichever color you like and that will be the background color on the entire page.
Just change the body padding and margin to 0 as advised above by 'mariusrec' and property set the background color to a matched one