HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, 6th Edition

Basic Table Tags

You can create a wide variety of tables with only five tags: the <table> tag, which encapsulates a table and its elements in the document's body content; the <tr> tag, which defines a table row; the <th> and <td> tags, which define the table's headers and data cells; and the <caption> tag, which defines a title or caption for the table. Beyond these core tags, you may also define and control whole sections of tables, including adding running headers and footers, with the <colgroup>, <col>, <tbody>, <thead>, and <tfoot> tags. Each tag has one or more required and optional attributes, some of which affect not only the tag itself but also related tags.

The <table> Tag

The <table> tag and its </table> end tag define and encapsulate a table within the body of your document. Unless you place them within the browser window by stylesheet, paragraph, division-level, or other alignment options, the browser stops the current text flow, breaks the line, inserts the table beginning on a new line, and then restarts the text flow on a new line below the table.

<table>

Function	Defines a table
Attributes	align, background, bgcolor, border, bordercolor ‼, bordercolordark ‼, bordercolorlight ‼, cellpadding, cellspacing, class, cols, dir, frame, height, hspace, id, lang, nowrap, onClick, onDblClick, onKeyDown, onKeyPress, onKeyUp, onMouseDown, onMouseMove, onMouseOut, onMouseOver, onMouseUp, rules, style, summary, title, valign, vspace, width
End tag	</table>; never omitted
Contains ...