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
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