1.) IDK how familiar you are with Webs, but Altervista is the same in that you upload files to your account. The nice thing, however, is AV doesn't make you jump through hoops or wait to "downgrade" your account. Once you're all signed up at AV, you can start uploading your HTML files right away.
2.) For your table, are you by any chance hitting enter at the bottom before closing it? If you're not checking off the box Disable Auto-Formatting or using the lj-raw tag, IJ will register that as a line break and make that gap. If you are using that checkbox or the lj-raw tag, can I take a peek at your table code?