HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, 6th Edition

Chapter 10. Tables

Of all the extensions that found their way into HTML and XHTML, none is more welcome than tables. While tables are useful for the general display of tabular data, they also serve an important role in managing document layout. Creative use of tables, as we'll show in this chapter, can go a long way to enliven an otherwise dull document layout. And you can apply all the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) styles to the various elements of a table to achieve a desktop-published look and feel.

The Standard Table Model

The standard model for tables is fairly straightforward: a table is a collection of numbers and words arranged in rows and columns of cells. Most cells contain the data values; others contain row and column headers that describe the data.

You define a table and include all of its elements between the <table> tag and its corresponding </table> end tag. Table elements, including data items, row and column headers, and captions, each have their own markup tags. Working from left to right and top to bottom, you define, in sequence, the header and data for each column cell across and down the table.

The latest standards also provide a rich collection of tag attributes, many of which once were popular extensions to HTML as supported by the popular browsers. They make your tables look good, by enabling special alignment of the table values and headers, borders, table rule lines, and automatic sizing of the data cells to accommodate their content, among other capabilities. ...