HTML thead Tag

HTML thead: Main Tips

• In an HTML table, the thead tag is used to group header content.
• HTML thead tag goes inside the <table> element and has <tr> elements nested inside.
• The thead HTML element is used together with <tbody> and <tfoot> to define parts of a table.

Creating HTML Table Headers

The thead tag is used to define the top table row that contains the heads of the columns. In other words, it allows you to create HTML table headers:

<table border>
 <thead>
  <tr>
    <td>Purchase</td>
    <td>Price</td>
  </tr>
 </thead>
</table>

You can only skip the ending tag if a <tbody> or <tfoot> follows your HTML thead element immediately.

Theory is great, but we recommend digging deeper!

Learn HTML5 and CSS3 to Build a Website from Scratch

Stone River eLearning

3.2 (507)

Removed thead Tag Attributes

HTML thead tag used to have a few tag-specific attributes. However, all of them have been deprecated in HTML4 and removed completely in HTML5. You can use CSS properties to achieve similar results.

align defined the alignment of content for the <thead> element:

<thead align="left">

Note: instead of align, use the CSS text-align property.

char set the alignment of content inside the <thead> according to the character specified:

<thead align="char" char="M">

charoff set the number of characters for aligning the content after the character specified by the char attribute:

<thead align="char" char="S" charoff="3">

valign set all the content inside the <thead> element to align vertically:

<thead valign="bottom">

Note: instead of valign, use the CSS vertical-align property.

Browser Support

Chrome

1+

Edge

All

Firefox

1+

IE

All

Opera

All

Safari

All

Mobile Browser Support

Chrome

All

Firefox

4+

Opera

All

Safari

All