<COL ...>
SPAN : how many columns this affectsALIGN : horizontal alignment | |
WIDTH : width of the columnBGCOLOR : background color of the column |
<COL ...>
sets properties for a column of table cells. <COL ...>
is an HTML 4.0 tag. Currently only MSIE and Netscape 6 recognize it.
<COL ...>
goes after the <TABLE ...>
tag and before any
<TR ...>
,
<THEAD ...>
, or
<TBODY ...>
elements. (It may go inside a
<COLGROUP ...>
element but it doesn't have to.)
Each <COL ...>
defines the properties of one column, unless you use
SPAN
to indicate that it is for more than one
column. So the first <COL ...>
sets the properties for the first
column, the second <COL ...>
sets the properties for the second column,
and so on.
For example, the following code uses three <COL ...>
tags to set properties of the cells in the first, second, and third columns of the table. The first <COL ...>
doesn't do anything except serve a placeholder for the first column. The second <COL ...>
uses the
ALIGN
attribute to right align all the cells in the second column. The third <COL ...>
uses STYLE
to set the styles of the cells in the third column so that the font color is red:
<TABLE BORDER CELLPADDING=5>
<COL>
<COL ALIGN=RIGHT>
<COL STYLE="color:red">
<TR> <TH>Expense</TH> <TH>Price</TH> <TH>Status</TH> </TR>
<TR> <TD>office suite</TD> <TD>1,343.56</TD> <TD>rental</TD> </TR>
<TR> <TD>cabling</TD> <TD>1.25</TD> <TD>installed</TD> </TR>
</TABLE>
which gives us this table:
Expense | Price | Status |
office suite | 1,343.56 | rental |
cabling | 1.25 | installed |
It's important to be absolutely clear on this point: <COL ...>
does not create columns. It merely sets the properties of columns that will be defined later in the code. Cells are not "contained" in <COL ...>
elements, they just set attributes which are applied to the cells in that column position.