Web Development and Design Foundations with XHTML, 5th Edition

8.1 Using Tables on Web Pages^315

XHTML Table Attributes

Common <table>element attributes include align, border,bordercolor, width,

cellspacing,cellpadding, bgcolor,summary, and title. The default display of

rows and cells in tables can also be modified using attributes. The most commonly used

attributes with the <td>element to configure table cells are bgcolor, valign, rowspan,

and colspan. Since XHTML table attributes are widely used on the Web, it’s a good

idea to become familiar with them. You’ll discover how to configure most of these

features using CSS later in this chapter. Let’s take a closer look at attributes used with

<table>elements.

Figure 8.5
Table added to
services.html

FAQ

Why doesn’t my table display?

While Internet Explorer will display a table even if you forget about a closing tag here or there,

other browsers such as Firefox can be very picky. Be sure to use Firefox to test pages that

contain tables. Internet Explorer will often ignore a missing or misspelled tag and display your

table. However, when Firefox encounters missing or unmatched table tags, it sometimes will

not display parts of your Web page or display only a portion of the table.

As you read about each <table>element attribute, experiment with the Birthday List

table. The best way to learn to write XHTML is to practice it.