HTML Tables
Tables are a good way of formatting information that
fits logically into cells of a row/column arrangement. They are quite
flexible, with a number of different options. One interesting one is
"spanning" where a cell may span more than one row or column. All tags
are in pairs, like <table>
... </table> which
delimits a table. Within a table there are rows, within a row there are
Detail items. Within the detail item is the cell's contents. The tags
are: (an example follows)
<table> - defines a table. May have border, padding, etc.
<tr> - delimits a row
<td> - defines a cell, with its contents
<th> - like <td> but with the sense of a "header", as in Name below.
<table border=1>
<tr>
<th> Name </th>
<td colspan="2" align="center"> Phones </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> Spiderman </td>
<td> 822-9600 </td>
<td> 911 </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Kermit</td>
</tr>
</table>
This will look like:
| Name |
Phones |
| Spiderman |
822-9600 |
911 |
| Kermit |
see also Table
Example
- Border is the simplest way to get a simple border. If border is
not specified, or =0, no border will appear. For more elaborate
control, use CSS.
- There is no requirement that each row have the same number of
cells.
- If you specify rowspan=3 for a cell, it will displace and push
rightcells in that column for the next 2 rows.
Not for page formatting!
Tables are appropriate for tabular data. Use a table to line up
columns, don't try to use spacing (except in <pre> tags).
It was once the case that tables were the only way to control layout of
a web page, and you will find many pages on the 'Net with nested tables
to do this. The resulting HTML code is convoluted and ugly. You should
not do this, since CSS now offers an
elegant solution to page layout
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