Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Chapter 13. Tables

HTML table elements, first introduced in Netscape 1.1, were developed to give authors a way to present rows and columns of tabular data. In fact, that has always been and remains their intended use. But it didn’t take long for designers, fed up with the one-column, full-width web pages, to co-opt tables as a tool for controlling page layout. For the last 10 years, complex table-based layouts have been the norm. Nobody cared much that it was a misuse of the table elements—there weren’t any other options. Today, we do have an option. Cascading Style Sheets offer the ability to create multicolumn pages and sophisticated layouts that were previously achievable only with tables. With improved browser support, pure style sheet layouts are finally a viable solution.

So tables-for-layout are out, but that doesn’t mean that the whole set of table elements has been tossed in the dustbin. In fact, tables are still the appropriate markup choice for real tabular data, such as schedules, statistics, and so on.

This chapter takes on the topic of HTML tables, starting with their basic structure and markup and moving on to methods that make data tables accessible when rendered non-visually. Tips for using layout tables responsibly are included as well. Along the way, the following table-related elements will be addressed.

table	Establishes a table
tr	Table row
td	Table cell
th	Table header cell
caption	Provides a table caption
thead	Identifies a table header ...