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Tables

Tags

Lesson contents

Basic tables

Tables are made up of rows and columns. Here's a table listing some university classes:

Table

It's hard to see the rows and columns, so let's add some lines.

Table

You can see that the table has two rows and three columns. That's what makes a table a table: rows and columns.

Here's the code for the table.

  • <table>
  •   <thead>
  •   </thead>
  •   <tbody>
  •     <tr>
  •       <td>DOG 101</td>
  •       <td>Introduction to the modern dog</td>
  •       <td>MW 9:00am - 11:00am</td>
  •     </tr>
  •     <tr>
  •       <td>DOG 110</td>
  •       <td>Dogs in the ancient world</td>
  •       <td>M 6:30pm - 9:30pm</td>
  •     </tr>
  •   </tbody>
  • </table>

The whole thing is surrounded with a table tag. Next is thead, giving table column headers. This table doesn't have any. After that is tbody, with the body of the table. Each row in the body is inside a tr tag. Inside each tr, there is a td for each table cell. The "d" in td stands for "data." There's one td for each column, in each row.

Header and footer

Here's the table of university classes again:

Table

It might help to add a header, so users know what the columns are. A footer can come in handy, too. How about this:

Header and footer

Here's the code. The table is divided into three parts: the header, the body, and the footer.

  • <table>
  •   <thead> Header starts
  •     <tr>
  •       <th>Course code</th>
  •       <th>Title</th>
  •       <th>When offered</th>
  •     </tr>
  •   </thead> Header ends
  •   <tbody> Body starts
  •     <tr>
  •       <td>DOG 101</td>
  •       <td>Introduction to the modern dog</td>
  •       <td>MW 9:00am - 11:00am</td>
  •     </tr>
  •     <tr>
  •       <td>DOG 110</td>
  •       <td>Dogs in the ancient world</td>
  •       <td>M 6:30pm - 9:30pm</td>
  •     </tr>
  •   </tbody> Body ends
  •   <tfoot> Footer starts
  •     <tr>
  •       <td colspan="3">Times subject to change.</td>
  •     </tr>
  •   </tfoot> Footer ends
  • </table>

The header uses the tag th instead of td.

  • <thead>
  •   <tr>
  •     <th>Course code</th>
  •     <th>Title</th>
  •     <th>When offered</th>
  •   </tr>
  • </thead>

By default, browsers render th as centered and bold. You can change that with CSS.

Here's the footer:

  • <tfoot>
  •   <tr>
  •     <td colspan="3">Times subject to change.</td>
  •   </tr>
  • </tfoot>

The colspan tells the footer's td to take up three columns, so it stretches across the entire row as needed:

Header and footer

Without the colspan...

  • <tfoot>
  •   <tr>
  •     <td>Times subject to change.</td>
  •   </tr>
  • </tfoot>

... the table would look like this:

Not so good footer

The browser makes the first column too wide, so it can fit the text "Times subject to change."

Putting the colspan in the footer...

  • <tfoot>
  •   <tr>
  •     <td colspan="3">Times subject to change.</td>
  •   </tr>
  • </tfoot>

... makes the table look more natural:

Header and footer

Exercise

Exercise

Calm worms

Use the &lt;table&gt; tag to make a page like this:

Goal

Use any other tags you need.

Password, yada yada.

Summary.

  • The table tag makes a table with rows and columns.
  • A table can have a head (thead), a body (tbody), and a footer (tfoot).
  • tr makes a table row.
  • Inside trs, td makes a table column.
  • colspan makes a td span multiple columns.

Up next

The tables you've seen so far are ugly. Let's make them look better.