Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference

Name

ALIGN — NN n/a IE 3 HTML 4

Synopsis

ALIGN=”alignConstant"

Optional

Establishes the horizontal alignment characteristics of content within column(s) covered by the COLGROUP element. The HTML 4.0 specification defines settings for the ALIGN attribute that are not yet reflected in the CSS specification. Therefore, this ALIGN attribute is not fully deprecated. As a rule, alignment should be specified by style sheet wherever possible.

Internet Explorer 3 documents label this attribute HALIGN. In practice, IE 3 for Windows appears to ignore both the ALIGN and HALIGN attribute for the COLGROUP element.

Example

<COLGROUP CLASS="dateCols" WIDTH="15" ALIGN="right" SPAN=3>

Value

HTML 4.0 and IE 4 have two sets of attribute values:

Value	IE 4	HTML 4.0
center	•	•
char	-	•
justify	-	•
left	•	•
right	•	•

The values center, left, and right are self-explanatory. The value justify is intended to space content so that text is justified down both left and right edges. For the value char, the CHAR attribute must also be set to specify the character on which alignment revolves. In the HTML 4.0 specification example, content that does not contain the character appears to be right-aligned to the location of the character in other rows of the same column.

It is important to bear in mind that the ALIGN attribute applies to every row of a column, including any TH element you specify for the table. If you want a different alignment for the column header, ...