The Web Design Group

TABLE - Table

Syntax <TABLE>...</TABLE>
Attribute Specifications
  • SUMMARY=Text (purpose/structure of table)
  • WIDTH=Length (table width)
  • BORDER=Pixels (border width)
  • FRAME=[ void | above | below | hsides | lhs | rhs | vsides | box | borderá] (outer border)
  • RULES=[ none | groups | rows | cols | allá] (inner borders)
  • CELLSPACING=Length (spacing between cells)
  • CELLPADDING=Length (spacing within cells)
  • ALIGN=[ left | center | rightá] (table alignment)
  • BGCOLOR=Color (table background color)
  • common attributes
Contents An optional CAPTION, followed by zero or more COL and COLGROUP elements, followed by an optional THEAD element, an optional TFOOT element, and then one or more TBODY elements
Contained in APPLET, BLOCKQUOTE, BODY, BUTTON, CENTER, DD, DEL, DIV, FIELDSET, FORM, IFRAME, INS, LI, MAP, NOFRAMES, NOSCRIPT, OBJECT, TD, TH

The TABLE element defines a table for multi-dimensional data arranged in rows and columns. TABLE is commonly used as a layout device, but authors should avoid this practice as much as possible. Tables can cause problems for users of narrow windows, large fonts, or non-visual browsers, and these problems are often accentuated when tables are used solely for layout purposes. As well, current visual browsers will not display anything until the complete table has been downloaded, which can have very noticeable effects when an entire document is laid out within a TABLE. Authors should try to use style sheets in place of TABLE for layout, though bugs in current browser implementations of style sheets can make this difficult.

The TABLE may contain a number of optional elements to provide a rich structure to the table. The optional CAPTION element gives a caption for the table and is followed by optional COL and COLGROUP elements that specify column widths and groupings. The THEAD, TFOOT, and TBODY elements then follow with groups of rows. The optional THEAD and TFOOT elements contain header and footer rows, respectively, while TBODY elements supply the table's main row groups. A row group contains TR elements for individual rows, and each TR contains TH or TD elements for header cells or data cells, respectively.

At least one TBODY element is required within a TABLE, but TBODY's start and end tags are both optional if there is only one TBODY and no THEAD or TFOOT. A simple table could thus be expressed as follows:

<TABLE>
  <TR>
    <TH>Abbreviation</TH>
    <TH>Long Form</TH>
  </TR>
  <TR>
    <TD>AFAIK</TD>
    <TD>As Far As I Know</TD>
  </TR>
  <TR>
    <TD>IMHO</TD>
    <TD>In My Humble Opinion</TD>
  </TR>
  <TR>
    <TD>OTOH</TD>
    <TD>On The Other Hand</TD>
  </TR>
</TABLE>

The same table could be expressed with a richer structure by grouping rows and adding a caption, as in the next example. The extra structural information allows an author to more easily suggest the presentation of the table using style sheets or TABLE's presentational attributes.

<TABLE>
  <CAPTION>Common Usenet Abbreviations</CAPTION>
  <THEAD>
    <TR>
      <TH>Abbreviation</TH>
      <TH>Long Form</TH>
    </TR>
  </THEAD>
  <TBODY>
    <TR>
      <TD>AFAIK</TD>
      <TD>As Far As I Know</TD>
    </TR>
    <TR>
      <TD>IMHO</TD>
      <TD>In My Humble Opinion</TD>
    </TR>
    <TR>
      <TD>OTOH</TD>
      <TD>On The Other Hand</TD>
    </TR>
  </TBODY>
</TABLE>

The TABLE element takes an optional SUMMARY attribute to describe the purpose and/or structure of the table. The overview provided by the SUMMARY attribute is particularly helpful to users of non-visual browsers. With simple tables, a good CAPTION is usually a sufficient summary, but complex tables may benefit from a more detailed overview via the SUMMARY attribute. The following example uses SUMMARY to describe a table. Note that the summary could also be included in a paragraph before the table, which is helpful since few browsers support SUMMARY.

<TABLE SUMMARY="This table gives the character entity reference,
                decimal character reference, and hexadecimal character
                reference for symbols and Greek letters.">
  <COLGROUP>
  <COLGROUP SPAN=3>
  <THEAD>
    <TR>
      <TH SCOPE=col>Character</TH>
      <TH SCOPE=col>Entity</TH>
      <TH SCOPE=col>Decimal</TH>
      <TH SCOPE=col>Hex</TH>
    </TR>
  </THEAD>
  <TBODY>
    <TR>
      <TD SCOPE=row>Latin small f with hook</TD>
      <TD>&amp;fnof;</TD>
      <TD>&amp;#402;</TD>
      <TD>&amp;#x192;</TD>
    </TR>
    ...
  </TBODY>
</TABLE>

The TABLE element also takes a number of optional attributes to provide presentational hints in visual browsers. Equivalents of these attributes in Cascading Style Sheets are under development and not widely supported by browsers.

More Information

Maintained by Liam Quinn <liam@htmlhelp.com>

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Copyright ⌐ 1998 Liam Quinn. All rights reserved.