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Web Design in a Nutshell, eMatter EditionChapter 10TablesCHAPTER 10
Tables
HTML tags for creating tables were originally developed for presenting rows and
columns of tabular data, however, designers quickly co-opted them as a valuable
tool for controlling the layout of web pages. Tables allow you to create columns of
text, hold white space between elements, and constrict the dimensions of the
page’s content in ways other HTML formatting tags won’t.
The HTML 4.0 Specification on tables is a great deal more complex than the
previous 3.2 standard. It makes an effort to bring context and structure to table
data as well as provide systems for incremental display and display on non-visual
display agents (such as speech- and Braille-based browsers). Of course, this is just
in its proposal stage as of this writing, so it will take a while to see how browsers
will adopt the standards in practical use. To read what the HTML 4.0 Specification
has to say about tables, see the W3C’s site athttp://www.w3c.org/TR/REC-html40/
struct/tables.html.
Summary of Table Tags
In this section, browser support for each tag is noted to the right of the tag name.
Browsers that do not support the tag are grayed out. Browsers that deprecate the
tag are noted with a superscript D. Tag usage is indicated below the tag name. A
more thorough listing of attributes for each tag, according to the HTML 4.0 Specifi-
cation, appears in Appendix A,HTML Tags and Elements.
Provides a brief summary of the table’s contents or purpose. According to the W3C
HTML 4.0 Specification, if used, the caption must immediately follow the