The COL and COLGROUP Elements

The <COL> and <COLGROUP> Elements

The <COL> and <COLGROUP> elements create and group columns together. Although the in-depth HTML for these elements is beyond the scope of this book, you can see an example using the <COL> and <COLGROUP> elements in Listing 14.10, where I've created a few columns with the <COL> element and grouped them together with the <COLGROUP> element. You can find the properties of these elements in Table 14.19. JavaScript's core HTML properties, methods , and events, which we covered in Chapters 5 and 6, also apply to these elements as well.

Table 14.19. The Properties of the <COL> and <COLGROUP> Elements (See Chapters 5 and 6 for the JavaScript core HTML properties, methods, and events that also apply to this element.)

Property	NS2	NS3	NS4	NS6	IE3a	IE3b	IE4	IE5	IE5.5	IE6
align				x			x	x	x	x
	Read/write
	Sets or gets the alignment of the element. Set to "center" (aligns to the center), "justify" (aligns to the left and right edge), "left" (the defaultaligns to the left edge), or "right" (aligns to the right edge).
ch				x						x
	Read/write
	Corresponds to the CHAR attribute, but doesn't actually do anything in either browser yet.
chOff				x						x
	Read/write
	Corresponds to the CHAROFF attribute, but doesn't actually do anything in either browser yet.
span				x			x	x	x	x
	Read/write
	Sets or gets the number of columns in the group.
vAlign				x			x	x	x	x
	Read/write
	Sets or gets how contents are aligned. Set to "middle" (the defaultaligns the text in the middle), "baseline" (aligns to the base line), "bottom" (aligns the text at the bottom), or "top" (aligns the text at the top).
width				x			x	x	x	x
	Read/write
	Sets or gets the width of the element, in pixels. Set to an integer.