If what you're actually asking is the difference between the Table items in the Toolbox under the HTML and Standard categories then the answer is that the former simply adds a basic HTML code fragment for a table while the latter adds an ASP.NET server control that gets parsed and converted to the HTML code for a table when the page is served. Like all ASP.NET server controls, you have access to the table and its cells as objects in the code-behind rather than having to use HTML ids to access them as document elements. It's much like the difference between adding an <input type="text"> element and an ASP.NET TextBox server control.