Adding headers and footers

There are some additional tags, <thead>, <tbody> and <tfoot>, that let you divide your tables into parts: header, body, and footer.

For many tables you won't need any of these tags. You only need to use these tags if you want to repeat the table header and footer on each page when a table is printed or group sections of your table together and then draw borders between sections.

The <thead> and <tfoot> tags add a running header and footer (one that repeats on each page). This isn’t much use if you only look at the page on screen but it becomes important if you print the page and the tables print across several pages.

The rules attribute allows you to group parts of your table together. It draws rules between each sections of your table, including the header, footer, and each body section. If the information in your table naturally falls into several groups, you may want to create a <tbody> section for each group and then use rules="groups" to delineate the sections.

Here’s an example:

<table width="300" border="1" 
bordercolor="red" rules="groups">
<thead>
<tr><th>An attractive little table</th></tr>
<tbody>
<tr><td>BRATES</td></tr>
<tr><td>CTAX</td></tr>
<tr><td>HBIS</td></tr>
<tbody>
<tr><td>FIMS</td></tr>
<tr><td>Land Charges</td></tr>
<tfoot>
<tr><td>The end of our lovely table</td></tr>

The browser puts rules between each section of your table, including the header, footer and each body section:

I believe this is only available in Internet Explorer.