 | This article has multiple issues. Please helpimprove it or discuss these issues on thetalk page.(Learn how and when to remove these messages) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
|
Atable cell is one grouping within a charttable used for storing information or data. Cells are grouped horizontally (rows of cells) and vertically (columns of cells). Each cell contains information relating to the combination of the row and column headings it is collinear with. Insoftware design, table cells are a keycomponent inHTML andwebpage building, and it is part of the <table> component. A coder may specify dimensions for a table cell, and use them to hold sections of webpages.
A table cell in HTML is a non-empty element and should always be closed. There are two different kinds of table cell in HTML: normal table cell and header cell.<td> denotes a table cell, the name implying 'data', while<th> denotes a table 'header'. The two can be used interchangeably, but it is recommended that header cell be only used for the top and side headers of a table.
A table cell also must be nested within a<table> tagand a<tr> (table row) tag. If there are more table cell tags in any given row than in any other, the particular<tr> must be given acolspan attribute declaring how many columns of cells wide it should be.
An example of an HTML table containing 4 cells:
| Cell 1 | Cell 2 |
| Cell 3 | Cell 4 |
HTML source:
<tableborder="1"><tr><td> Cell 1</td><td> Cell 2</td></tr><tr><td> Cell 3</td><td> Cell 4</td></tr></table>
Every row must have the same number of table data cells, occasionally table data cells have to span more than one column or row. In this case the tags colspan and/or rowspan are used - where they are set to a number.
| <--This row has threetable data cells | |||
<--This row has two. The first usescolspan="2" | |||
<--This row has three table data cells, but one spans two rows because it usesrowspan="2" | |||
| <--This row has only two table data cells, because its first is being taken up | |||
