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Tables

HTML version 3.0 includes enhancements to allow the definition of tabular material, by means of the new TABLE element. It will be possible to define a table caption and to specify whether a table cell contains headers or data. A cell may contain text or images, and adjacent cells may be merged, perhaps to provide more space for header information. Support for tables is included in Arena and in version 2.5 of Mosaic for the X Window System and will probably appear in other browsers before HTML version 3.0 is ratified.

The optional BORDER attribute specifies that the table should be surrounded by a border. A number of elements can appear within the TABLE element:

CAPTION

Caption for the table.

TH

Table header cell. Can take the attributes ROWSPAN=n and COLSPAN=n to indicate multi-column and/or multi-row cell. The BR element can be used to break lines within the cell.

TD

Table cell data. COLSPAN and ROWSPAN attributes can be specified as for the TH element.

TR

Start a new row.

The table appearing in the screenshot in Section was created with:

  <TABLE BORDER>
  <CAPTION>Seed sowing times in the United Kingdom</CAPTION>
    <TH ROWSPAN=2>Plant<BR>Name</TH>
    <TH COLSPAN=2>Months</TH>
  <TR>
    <TH>From</TH><TH>To</TH>
  <TR>
    <TD ALIGN=LEFT>Acanthus mollis</TD>      <TD>Apr</TD><TD>May</TD>
  <TR>
    <TD ALIGN=LEFT>Dianthus neglectus</TD>   <TD COLSPAN=2>Apr</TD>
  <TR>
    <TD ALIGN=LEFT>Helleborus orientalis</TD><TD>May</TD><TD>Jun</TD>
  <TR>
    <TD ALIGN=LEFT>Papaver somniferum</TD>   <TD>Apr</TD><TD>May</TD>
  </TABLE>

Tables can be used for placement, for example to create a form where the input fields are aligned.

Spinning the Web by Andrew Ford
© 1995 International Thomson Publishing
© 2002 Andrew Ford and Ford & Mason Ltd
Note: this HTML document was generated in December 1994 directly from the LaTeX source files using LaTeX2HTML. It was formatted into our standard page layout using the Template Toolkit. The document is mainly of historical interest as obviously many of the sites mentioned have long since disappeared.