<th>: The Table Header element
The <th>
HTML element defines a cell as header of a group of table cells. The exact nature of this group is defined by the scope
and headers
attributes.
Content categories | None. |
---|---|
Permitted content | Flow content, but with no header, footer, sectioning content, or heading content descendants. |
Tag omission |
The start tag is mandatory. The end tag may be omitted, if it is immediately followed by a <th> or
<td> element or if there are no more data in its
parent element.
|
Permitted parents | A <tr> element. |
Implicit ARIA role | columnheader or rowheader |
Permitted ARIA roles | Any |
DOM interface | HTMLTableCellElement |
Attributes
This element includes the global attributes.
abbr
-
This attribute contains a short abbreviated description of the cell's content. Some user-agents, such as speech readers, may present this description before the content itself.
colspan
-
This attribute contains a non-negative integer value that indicates for how many columns the cell extends. Its default value is
1
. Values higher than 1000 will be considered as incorrect and will be set to the default value (1). headers
-
This attribute contains a list of space-separated strings, each corresponding to the id attribute of the
<th>
elements that apply to this element. rowspan
-
This attribute contains a non-negative integer value that indicates for how many rows the cell extends. Its default value is
1
; if its value is set to0
, it extends until the end of the table section (<thead>
,<tbody>
,<tfoot>
, even if implicitly defined), that the cell belongs to. Values higher than 65534 are clipped down to 65534. scope
-
This enumerated attribute defines the cells that the header (defined in the
<th>
) element relates to. It may have the following values:row
: The header relates to all cells of the row it belongs to.col
: The header relates to all cells of the column it belongs to.rowgroup
: The header belongs to a rowgroup and relates to all of its cells. These cells can be placed to the right or the left of the header, depending on the value of thedir
attribute in the<table>
element.colgroup
: The header belongs to a colgroup and relates to all of its cells.
If the
scope
attribute is not specified, or its value is notrow
,col
, orrowgroup
, orcolgroup
, then browsers automatically select the set of cells to which the header cell applies.
Deprecated attributes
align
-
This enumerated attribute specifies how the cell content's horizontal alignment will be handled. Possible values are:
left
: The content is aligned to the left of the cell.center
: The content is centered in the cell.right
: The content is aligned to the right of the cell.justify
(with text only): The content is stretched out inside the cell so that it covers its entire width.char
(with text only): The content is aligned to a character inside the<th>
element with minimal offset. This character is defined by thechar
andcharoff
attributes.
The default value when this attribute is not specified is
left
.Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete in the latest standard.
- To achieve the same effect as the
left
,center
,right
orjustify
values, apply the CSStext-align
property to the element. - To achieve the same effect as the
char
value, give thetext-align
property the same value you would use for thechar
.
axis
-
This attribute contains a list of space-separated strings. Each string is the
id
of a group of cells that this header applies to.Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete in the latest standard: use the
scope
attribute instead. bgcolor
-
This attribute defines the background color of each cell in a column. It consists of a 6-digit hexadecimal code as defined in sRGB and is prefixed by '#'. This attribute may be used with one of sixteen predefined color strings:
black
= "#000000"green
= "#008000"silver
= "#C0C0C0"lime
= "#00FF00"gray
= "#808080"olive
= "#808000"white
= "#FFFFFF"yellow
= "#FFFF00"maroon
= "#800000"navy
= "#000080"red
= "#FF0000"blue
= "#0000FF"purple
= "#800080"teal
= "#008080"fuchsia
= "#FF00FF"aqua
= "#00FFFF"
Note: Do not use this attribute, as it is non-standard and only implemented in some versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer: The
<th>
element should be styled using CSS. To create a similar effect use thebackground-color
property in CSS instead. char
-
The content in the cell element is aligned to a character. Typical values include a period (.) to align numbers or monetary values. If
align
is not set tochar
, this attribute is ignored.Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete in the latest standard. To achieve the same effect, you can specify the character as the first value of the
text-align
property. charoff
-
This attribute is used to shift column data to the right of the character specified by the char attribute. Its value specifies the length of this shift.
Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete in the latest standard.
height
-
This attribute is used to define a recommended cell height.
Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete in the latest standard: use the CSS
height
property instead. valign
-
This attribute specifies how a text is vertically aligned inside a cell. Possible values for this attribute are:
baseline
: Positions the text near the bottom of the cell and aligns it with the baseline of the characters instead of the bottom. If characters don't descend below the baseline, the baseline value achieves the same effect asbottom
.bottom
: Positions the text near the bottom of the cell.middle
: Centers the text in the cell.- and
top
: Positions the text near the top of the cell.
Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete in the latest standard: use the CSS
vertical-align
property instead. width
-
This attribute is used to define a recommended cell width. Additional space can be added with the
cellspacing
andcellpadding
properties and the width of the<col>
element can also create extra width. But, if a column's width is too narrow to show a particular cell properly, it will be widened when displayed.Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete in the latest standard: use the CSS
width
property instead.
Examples
See <table>
for examples on <th>
.
Specifications
Specification |
---|
HTML Standard # the-th-element |
Browser compatibility
BCD tables only load in the browser