summary of section 5

Using tables in HTML

Tables are a very important part of HTML, most browsers support them and hence make a valuable tool for displaying information that would otherwise be complicated to explain. The points to remember about tables are...

• The <TABLE> tags start and end a table plus specify table with parameters.
• The <TR> tags start and end a row within a table plus specify parameters consistent along the row.
• The <TH> tags define a header cell, normally the text here is by default bold and centred in the cell, you can put any form of HTML inbetween the tags.
• The <TD> tags define a data cell, you can put any form of HTML inbetween the tags.
• You can force the width of the table to be a specific value by setting the WIDTH attribute for the table.
• If the above is not defined then the width and height of the table is determined by the widest and tallest cells in each column and row respectively.
• You can specify a header, body and footer to each table, so when the document is printed it still make sense. This is done by wrapping particular rows with the <THEAD> , <TBODY> and <TFOOT> tags.

Tables can also be used to format pages but this is not defined here. How to use tables for formatting will be explained in more detail elsewhere.