scope Attribute

Where to use the scope Attribute

• As Type Enumeration (row | col | rowgroup | colgroup):
  scope is declared on the elements: th, td

Description

The scope attribute may be specified on a table cell to specify for which other cells within the table that cell is a header.

There are four possible values for scope: "row", "col", "rowgroup" and "colgroup" (although "rowgroup" and "colgroup" are not available in the *W3C XHTML 1.1 Basic Tables Module).

row

The cell is a header for the rest of the row which contains it

col

The cell is a header for the rest of the column which contains it

rowgroup

The cell is a header for the rest of the row group ( thead, tbody or tfoot ) which contains it

colgroup

The cell is a header for the rest of the column group ( see the colgroup element ) which contains it

Note that using the value "rowgroup" (or "colgroup") does not mean that the heading is to be applied to the rows (or columns) spanned by the cell's rowspan (or colspan) attribute.

For more information, see *HTML 4.01 scope Attribute Specification.

See also the headers, axis and abbr attributes.

Any given table will usually use either a scope or a headers technique for assigning headings to cells, but not both. The scope method is less cumbersome to use and is suitable for simple tables.