Webmaster in a Nutshell, Third Edition

Chapter 5. Tables

HTML tables offer a detailed way to present data, as well as a creative way to lay out the information in your web documents. The standard HTML model for tables is straightforward: a table is a collection of data arranged and related in rows and columns of cells. Most cells contain data values; others contain row and column headers that describe the data.

The HTML 4.01 table specification defines a number of tags and attributes for creating tables. Newly supported tags allow you to organize and display table data with great detail, and with the application of CSS-style elements, table styles can be standardized across your documents.

The main tags that describe tables are: <table>, <caption>, <tr>, <th>, and <td>. The <table> tag surrounds the table and gives default specifications for the entire table such as background color, border size, and spacing between cells. The optional <caption> tag is placed within the <table> tags and provides a caption for the table. <tr> tags denote each row of the table and contain the tags for each cell within a row. <th> and <td> describe the table cells themselves, <th> being a header cell and <td> being a regular cell. <th> and <td> tags surround the information that is displayed within each table cell.

Table cells are defined across each row of a table. The number of cells in a row is determined by the number of <th> or <td> tags contained within a <tr>. If a table cell spans more than one row (using the rowspan