As the table below shows, HTML5 is abandoning many of the styling options of the TABLE command:
| Attribute | Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
| >align | left center right |
Not supported in HTML5. Specifies the alignment of a table according to surrounding text |
| bgcolor | rgb(x,x,x) #xxxxxx colorname |
Not supported in HTML5. Specifies the background color for a table |
| border | 1 “” |
Not supported in HTML5. Specifies whether the table cells should have borders or not |
| cellpadding | pixels | Not supported in HTML5. Specifies the space between the cell wall and the cell content |
| cellspacing | pixels | Not supported in HTML5. Specifies the space between cells |
| frame | void above below hsides lhs rhs vsides box border |
Not supported in HTML5. Specifies which parts of the outside borders that should be visible |
| rules | none groups rows cols all |
Not supported in HTML5. Specifies which parts of the inside borders that should be visible |
| sortable | sortable | Specifies that the table should be sortable |
| summary | text | Not supported in HTML5. Specifies a summary of the content of a table |
| width | pixels % |
Not supported in HTML5. Specifies the width of a table |
This is not the only HTML tag that has seen its styling options severely cutback in HTML5 – the same has happened to the EM, FONT, OL, UL, H1 thru to H6 among others. Instead developers are told to replace the depreacated styling attributes with the recommendation to do the equivalent styling in CSS. However, HTML5 has retained some styling commands like MARK and SMALL; but consistency is certainly not a W3C virtue.
What Has Been Lost
Now this reviewer will openly admit to the belief that the TABLE command, like Rodney Dangerfield, gets no respect. Let me show you why:
Table with frame=”box”:
[iframe src=’http://theopensourcery.ca/slideshows/tableframesdemo.html’ width=’600′ height=’320′]
Using the FRAMES=’BOX’ option one can very quickly style a table which otherwise demands more laborious CSS styling commands. There is a trade-off here:
1)Working web pages are subject to deprecation failure depending on the browser;
2)But HTML has less and less styling duties and cedes those to CSS;
3)the cost is more STYLE=”..” CSS statements embedded in your code;
4)Or more STYLE.CSS files which can present problems for CMS systems like Blogger, Webs, Wix, Weebly, WordPress, etc.
So the removal of styling options from HTML and transfer of these tasks to CSS-only is not “worry free”.