Comments on: HTML5 Tables

By: ses5909

ses5909 — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 07:56:16 +0000

Thanks for bringing it down to my level tommy. I’ve got this post saved.

By: AutisticCuckoo

AutisticCuckoo — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 06:51:28 +0000

For the “auto” state, the spec says, “If the header cell is not in the first row of the table, or not in the first cell of a row, then don’t assign the header cell to any data cells.”

Thus if you have a THEAD that contains more than one TR, you will have to use explicit SCOPE attributes for THs in the 2nd, 3rd, etc., rows.

I’m not talking about TH elements with ROWSPAN=”2″, but about multiple TR elements containing multiple levels of column or column group headers.

By: Lachlan Hunt

Lachlan Hunt — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 15:16:00 +0000

The reason colgroup is now required in HTML5 is based of the way IE parses col elements. In IE’s DOM, col elements are always children of a colgroup element. But the start tags for colgroup are optional, so you don’t have to write them in your HTML markup.

Requiring scope for multi-row header cells seems like a bug in the spec (assuming you haven’t misinterpreted it). The association algorithm should still be able to reliably handle header cells, no matter how many rows they span. Similarly, for row headers spanning multiple columns.