HTML Table Tags

Table

Table are very useful to arrange in HTML and they are used very frequently by almost all we developers.Tables are just like spreadsheets and they are made up of rows and columns.

You will create a table in HTML/XHTML by using<table> tag,Inside<table> element the table is written out  row by row .A row is contained  inside a <tr> tag,which stands for table row .And each cell is then written inside the row element using a <td> tag.which stands for table data.

Example of HTML Table

<table border=”1”>

<tr>

<td> Row 1, column 1</td>

<tr><td> Row 1, column 2</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td> Row 2, column 1</td>

<td> Row 2, column 2</td>

</tr>

</table>

This will produce following result:

Row1,Column1	Row 1, column 2
Row 2, column 1	Row 2, column 2

Note: In the above example border is an attribute of <tabel> and it will put border across all the cells. If you do not need a border then you cal use border=”0”.The border attribute and other attributes also mentioned  in this session are deprecated and they have been repalced by CSS. So it recommended to use CSS instead os using any attribute directly.

Table Heading –The <th> Element

Table heading can be defined using <th> element .This tag will be put to replace <td> tag which is used to represent actual data. Normally you will put your top row as table heading as shown below, otherwise you can use<th> element at any place:

<table border=”1”>

<tr>

<th> Name</th>

<th> Salary</th>

</tr>

<tr>

<td> Ramesh Raman</td>

<td>5000</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td> Shabbir Hussein</td>

<td>7000</td>

</tr>

</table>

This will produce following result. You can see its making heading as a bold one:

Name	Salary
Ramesh Raman	5000
Shabbir Hussein	7000

Note

Each cell must, however, have either a<td> or a <th> element in order for the table to display correctly even if that element is empty.

Table Cell padding and Cell spacing:

There are two attributes called cellpadding and cellspacing which you will use to adjust the white space in your table cell.Cell spacing defines the width of the border,while cellpadding represents the distance betwenn cell borders and the content with in.Following is the example:

<table border=”1” cell padding=”5” cellspacing=”5”>

<tr>

<th>Name</th>

<th>Salary</th>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>Ramesh Raman</td>

<td>5000</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>Shabbir Hussein</td>

<td> 7000</td>

</tr>

</table>

This will produce following result

Name	Salary
Ramesh Raman	5000
Shabbir Hussein	7000

Colspan and Rowspan Attributes

You will use colspan attribute if you want to merge two or more columns into a single column. Similiar way you will use rowspan if you want to merge two or more rows.Following is the example:

<table border=”1”>

<tr>

<th> Column 1</th>

<th> Column 2</th>

<th> Column 3</th>

</tr>

<tr><td rowspan =”2”> Row 1 Cell1</td>

<td> Row 1 Cell1</td><td> Row 1 Cell3</td></tr>

<tr><td>Row 2 Cell 2 </td><td>Row 2 Cell 3 </td></tr>

<tr><td colspan=”3”>Row 3 Cell 1</td></tr>

</table>

This will produce following result

 

 

Tables Backgrounds

You can set table background using of the following two ways:

• Using bgcolor attribute –You can set background color for whole table or just for one cell.
• Using background attribute- You can set background image for whole table or just for one cell.

Note: You can set border color also using bordercolor attribute.

Here is an example of using bgcolor attribute:

<table border=”5” bordercolor=”green” bgcolor=”gray”>

<tr>

<th> Column 1</th>

<th> Column 2</th>

<th> Column 3</th>

</tr>

<tr><td rowspan=”2” >Row 1 Cell 1</td>

<td bg color =”red” > Row 1 Cell2</td><td> Row 1 Cell3</td></tr>

<tr><td> Row 2 Cell 2</td><td> Row 2 Cell 3</td></tr>

<tr><td colspan=”3”> Row 3 Cell 1</td></tr>

</table>

This will produce following result:

Tables Back grounds

You can set table background using of the following two ways:

• Using bgcolor attribute –You can set background color for whole table or just for one cell.
• Using background attribute- You can set background image for whole table or just for one cell.

Note: You can set border color also using bordercolor attribute.

Here is an example of using bgcolor attribute:

<table border=”5” border color=”green” bgcolor=”gray”>

<tr>

<th> Column 1 </th>

<th> Column 2 </th>

<th> Column 3 </th>

</tr>

<tr><td rowspan=”2”>Row 1 Cell 1</td>

<td bgcolor =”red”> Row 1 Cell 2 </td><td> Row 1 Cell 3 </td></tr>

<tr><td> Row 2 Cell  2</td><td> Row 2 Cell 3 </td></tr>

<tr><td colspan =”3” >Row 3 Cell 1</td></tr>

</table>

This will produce following result:

 

Here is an example of using background attribute:

<table border=”1” background =”/images/home.gif”>

<tr>

<th> Column 1 </th>

<th> Column 2 </th>

<th> Column 3 </th>

</tr>

<tr><td rowspan=”2”>Row 1 Cell 1</td>

<td bgcolor =”red”> Row 1 Cell 2 </td><td> Row 1 Cell 3 </td></tr>

<tr><td> Row 2 Cell  2</td><td> Row 2 Cell 3 </td></tr>

<tr><td colspan =”3” background=”/images/pattern1.gif”>Row 3 Cell 1</td></tr>

</table>

This will produce following result:

Table Height and Width

You can set a table width and height using width and height attributes. You can specify table width or height in terms of integer value or in terms of percentage of available screen area. Following is the example:

<table border=”1” width=”400” height=”150”>

<tr>

<td> Row 1 ,Column 1</td>

<td> Row 1 ,Column 2</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td> Row 2 ,Column 1</td>

<td> Row 2 ,Column 2</td>

</tr>

</table>

This will produce following result:

<table border=”1”>

<tr>

<td>

<table border =”1”>

<tr>

<th> Name</th>

<th> Salary</th>

</tr>

<tr>

<td> Ramesh Raman</td>

<td> 5000</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td> Shabbir Hussein</td>

<td> 7000</td>

</tr>

</table>

</td>

<td>

<ul>

<li> This is another cell<li>

<li>Using list inside this cell</li>

</ul>

</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td> Row 2 ,Column 1 </td>

<td> Row 2 ,Column 2</td>

</tr>

</table>

This will produce following result: