HTML Table Tutorial

This HTML table tutorial demonstrates how to create tables in HTML. It assumes you know how to create an HTML page. If you're not familiar with HTML try the HTML Tutorial.

Basic Table

In HTML, you create tables using the table tag, in conjunction with the tr and td tags. Although there are other tags for creating tables, these are the basics for creating a table in HTML.

Here's the code for a basic table:

You'll notice that we added a border attribute to the table tag. This particular attribute allows us to specify how thick the border will be. If we don't want a border we can specify 0 (zero). In many cases, you might choose to leave this value at zero so that you can use Cascading Style Sheets to define your table borders. More on this below.

Table Headers

Many tables, particularly those with tabular data, have a header row or column. In HTML, you can use the th tag.

Most browsers display table headers in bold text.

Colspan

You can use the colspan attribute to make a cell span multiple columns.

Rowspan

Similar to what colspan is for columns, rowspan enables you to make a cell span multiple rows.

Adding CSS to tables

You can format your tables using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Using CSS, you can specify background colors, border colors, border styles etc.

Wrap up

You can achieve some pretty amazing stuff with tables, especially when used in conjunction with CSS. If you'd like to learn more:

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