29/08/2016

HTML Tables

The HTML Tables allow web authors to arrange data like text, images, links, other tables, etc. into rows and columns of cells.

The HTML tables are created using the <table> tag in which the <tr> tag is used to create table rows and <td> tag is used to create data cells.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Tables</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="1">
<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>
</body>
</html>
This will produce following result:
Row 1, Column 1Row 1, Column 2
Row 2, Column 1Row 2, Column 2
Here border is an attribute of <table> tag and it is used to put a border across all the cells. If you do not need a border then you can use border="0".

Table Heading

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

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Table Header</title>
</head>
<body>
<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>
</body>
</html>
This will produce following result:
NameSalary
Ramesh Raman5000
Shabbir Hussein7000

Cellpadding and Cellspacing Attributes

There are two attribiutes called cellpadding and cellspacing which you will use to adjust the white space in your table cells. The cellspacing attribute defines the width of the border, while cellpadding represents the distance between cell borders and the content within a cell.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Table Cellpadding</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="1" cellpadding="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>
</body>
</html>
This will produce following result:
NameSalary
Ramesh Raman5000
Shabbir Hussein7000

Colspan and Rowspan Attributes

You will use colspan attribute if you want to merge two or more columns into a single column. Similar way you will use rowspan if you want to merge two or more rows.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Table Colspan/Rowspan</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="1">
<tr>
<th>Column 1</th>
<th>Column 2</th>
<th>Column 3</th>
</tr>
<tr><td rowspan="2">Row 1 Cell 1</td><td>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>
</body>
</html>
This will produce following result:
Column 1Column 2Column 3
Row 1 Cell 1Row 1 Cell 2Row 1 Cell 3
Row 2 Cell 2Row 2 Cell 3
Row 3 Cell 1

Tables Backgrounds

You can set table background using one of the following two ways:
  • bgcolor attribute - You can set background color for whole table or just for one cell.
  • background attribute - You can set background image for whole table or just for one cell.
You can also set border color also using bordercolor attribute.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Table Background</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="1" bordercolor="green" bgcolor="yellow">
<tr>
<th>Column 1</th>
<th>Column 2</th>
<th>Column 3</th>
</tr>
<tr><td rowspan="2">Row 1 Cell 1</td><td>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>
</body>
</html>
This will produce following result:
Column 1Column 2Column 3
Row 1 Cell 1Row 1 Cell 2Row 1 Cell 3
Row 2 Cell 2Row 2 Cell 3
Row 3 Cell 1
Here is an example of using background attribute. Here we will use an image available in /images directory.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Table Background</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="1" bordercolor="green" background="/images/test.png">
<tr>
<th>Column 1</th>
<th>Column 2</th>
<th>Column 3</th>
</tr>
<tr><td rowspan="2">Row 1 Cell 1</td><td>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>
</body>
</html>
This will produce following result. Here background image did not apply to table's header.
Column 1Column 2Column 3
Row 1 Cell 1Row 1 Cell 2Row 1 Cell 3
Row 2 Cell 2Row 2 Cell 3
Row 3 Cell 1

Table Height and Width

You can set a table width and height using width and height attrubutes. You can specify table width or height in terms of pixels or in terms of percentage of available screen area.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Table Width/Height</title>
</head>
<body>
<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>
</body>
</html>
This will produce following result:
Row 1, Column 1Row 1, Column 2
Row 2, Column 1Row 2, Column 2

Table Caption

The caption tag will serve as a title or explanation for the table and it shows up at the top of the table. This tag is deprecated in newer version of HTML/XHTML.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Table Caption</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="1" width="100%">
<caption>This is the caption</caption>
<tr>
<td>row 1, column 1</td><td>row 1, columnn 2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>row 2, column 1</td><td>row 2, columnn 2</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
This will produce following result:
This is the caption
row 1, column 1row 1, columnn 2
row 2, column 1row 2, columnn 2

Table Header, Body, and Footer

Tables can be divided into three portions: a header, a body, and a foot. The head and foot are rather similar to headers and footers in a word-processed document that remain the same for every page, while the body is the main content holder of the table.
The three elements for separating the head, body, and foot of a table are:
  • <thead> - to create a separate table header.
  • <tbody> - to indicate the main body of the table.
  • <tfoot> - to create a separate table footer.
A table may contain several <tbody> elements to indicate different pages or groups of data. But it is notable that <thead> and <tfoot> tags should appear before <tbody>

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Table</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="1" width="100%">
<thead>
<tr>
<td colspan="4">This is the head of the table</td>
</tr>
</thead>
<tfoot>
<tr>
<td colspan="4">This is the foot of the table</td>
</tr>
</tfoot>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Cell 1</td>
<td>Cell 2</td>
<td>Cell 3</td>
<td>Cell 4</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</body>
</html>
This will produce following result:
This is the head of the table
This is the foot of the table
Cell 1Cell 2Cell 3Cell 4

Nested Tables

You can use one table inside another table. Not only tables you can use almost all the tags inside table data tag <td>.

Example

Following is the example of using another table and other tags inside a table cell.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Table</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="1" width="100%">
<tr>
<td>
   <table border="1" width="100%">
   <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>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
This will produce following result:
NameSalary
Ramesh Raman5000
Shabbir Hussein7000

26/08/2016

HTML Comments

Comment is a piece of code which is ignored by any web browser. It is a good practice to add comments into your HTML code, especially in complex documents, to indicate sections of a document, and any other notes to anyone looking at the code. Comments help you and others understand your code and increases code readability.
HTML comments are placed in between <!-- ... --> tags. So any content placed with-in <!-- ... --> tags will be treated as comment and will be completely ignored by the browser.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>  <!-- Document Header Starts -->
<title>This is document title</title>
</head> <!-- Document Header Ends -->
<body>
<p>Document content goes here.....</p>
</body>
</html>
This will produce following result without displaying the content given as a part of comments:
Document content goes here.....

Valid vs Invalid Comments

Comments do not nest which means a comment can not be put inside another comment. Second the double-dash sequence "--" may not appear inside a comment except as part of the closing --> tag. You must also make sure that there are no spaces in the start-of-comment string.

Example

Here given comment is a valid comment and will be wiped off by the browser.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Valid Comment Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<!--   This is valid comment -->
<p>Document content goes here.....</p>
</body>
</html>
But following line is not a valid comment and will be displayed by the browser. This is because there is a space between the left angle bracket and the exclamation mark.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>  
<title>Invalid Comment Example</title>
</head> 
<body>
< !--   This is not a valid comment -->
<p>Document content goes here.....</p>
</body>
</html>
This will produce following result:
< !-- This is not a valid comment -->
Document content goes here.....

Multiline Comments

So far we have seen single line comments, but HTML supports multi-line comments as well.
You can comment multiple lines by the special beginning tag <!-- and ending tag --> placed before the first line and end of the last line as shown in the given example below.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html><html>
<head>  
<title>Multiline Comments</title>
</head> 
<body>
<!--   
This is a multiline comment and it can
span through as many as lines you like.
-->
<p>Document content goes here.....</p>
</body>
</html>
This will produce following result:
Document content goes here.....

Conditional Comments

Conditional comments only work in Internet Explorer (IE) on Windows but they are ignored by other browsers. They are supported from Explorer 5 onwards, and you can use them to give conditional instructions to different versions of IE.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html><html>
<head>  
<title>Conditional Comments</title>

<!--[if IE 6]>
   Special instructions for IE 6 here
<![endif]-->

</head> 
<body>
<p>Document content goes here.....</p>
</body>
</html>
You will come across a situation where you will need to apply a different style sheet based on different versions of Internet Explorer, in such situation conditional comments will be helpful.

Using Comment Tag

There are few browsers that support <comment> tag to comment a part of HTML code.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html><html>
<head>
<title>Using Comment Tag</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This is <comment>not</comment> Internet Explorer.</p>
</body>
</html>
If you are using IE then it will produce following result:
This is Internet Explorer.
But if you are not using IE, then it will produce following result:
This is not Internet Explorer.

Commenting Script Code

Though you will learn Javascript with HTML, in a separate tutorial, but here you must make a note that if you are using Java Script or VB Script in your HTML code then it is recommended to put that script code inside proper HTML comments so that old browsers can work properly.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html><html>
<head>
<title>Commenting Script Code</title>
<script>
<!-- 
   document.write("Hello World!")
//-->
</script>
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello , World!</p>
</body>
</html>
This will produce following result:
Hello World!
Hello , World!

Commenting Style Sheets

Though you will learn using style sheets with HTML in a separate tutorial, but here you must make a note that if you are using Casecading Style Sheet (CSS) in your HTML code then it is recommended to put that style sheet code inside proper HTML comments so that old browsers can work properly.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html><html>
<head>
<title>Commenting Style Sheets</title>
<style>
<!--
.example {
  border:1px solid #4a7d49;
}
//-->
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="example">Hello , World!</div>
</body>
</html>
This will produce following result:
Hello , World!
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