The HTML <col>
element defines a column within a table and is used for defining common semantics on all common cells. It is generally found within a <colgroup>
element.
This element allows styling columns using CSS, but only a few attributes will have an effect on the column (see the CSS 2.1 specification for a list).
Content categories | None. |
---|---|
Permitted content | None, it is an empty element. |
Tag omission | The start tag is mandatory, but, as it is a void element, the use of an end tag is forbidden. |
Permitted parents | <colgroup> only, though it can be implicitly defined as its start tag is not mandatory. The <colgroup> must not have a span attribute. |
Permitted ARIA roles | None |
DOM interface | HTMLTableColElement |
Attributes
This element includes the global attributes.
align
Deprecated since HTML4.01, Obsolete since HTML5- This enumerated attribute specifies how horizontal alignment of each column cell content will be handled. Possible values are:
left
, aligning the content to the left of the cellcenter
, centering the content in the cellright
, aligning the content to the right of the celljustify
, inserting spaces into the textual content so that the content is justified in the cellchar
, aligning the textual content on a special character with a minimal offset, defined by thechar
andcharoff
attributes Unimplemented (see bug 2212).
If this attribute is not set, its value is inherited from the
align
of the<colgroup>
element this<col>
element belongs too. If there are none, theleft
value is assumed.Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete (not supported) in the latest standard.- To achieve the same effect as the
left
,center
,right
orjustify
values:- Do not try to set the
text-align
property on a selector giving a<col>
element. Because<td>
elements are not descendant of the<col>
element, they won't inherit it. - If the table doesn't use a
colspan
attribute, use thetd:nth-child(an+b)
CSS selector. Seta
to zero andb
to the position of the column in the table, e.g.td:nth-child(2) { text-align: right; }
to right-align the second column. - If the table does use a
colspan
attribute, the effect can be achieved by combining adequate CSS attribute selectors like[colspan=n]
, though this is not trivial.
- Do not try to set the
- To achieve the same effect as the
char
value, in CSS3, you can use the value of thechar
as the value of thetext-align
property Unimplemented.
bgcolor
- This attribute defines the background color of each cell of the column. It is one of the 6-digit hexadecimal code as defined in sRGB, prefixed by a '#'. One of the sixteen predefined color strings may be used:
black
= "#000000"green
= "#008000"silver
= "#C0C0C0"lime
= "#00FF00"gray
= "#808080"olive
= "#808000"white
= "#FFFFFF"yellow
= "#FFFF00"maroon
= "#800000"navy
= "#000080"red
= "#FF0000"blue
= "#0000FF"purple
= "#800080"teal
= "#008080"fuchsia
= "#FF00FF"aqua
= "#00FFFF"Usage note: Do not use this attribute, as it is non-standard and only implemented in some versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer: the<col>
element should be styled using CSS. To give a similar effect to the bgcolor attribute, use the CSS propertybackground-color
, on the relevant<td>
elements.
char
Deprecated since HTML4.01, Obsolete since HTML5- This attribute is used to set the character to align the cells in a column on. Typical values for this include a period (.) when attempting to align numbers or monetary values. If
align
is not set tochar
, this attribute is ignored.Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete (and not supported) in the latest standard. To achieve the same effect as thechar
, in CSS3, you can use the character set using thechar
attribute as the value of thetext-align
property Unimplemented.
charoff
Deprecated since HTML4.01, Obsolete since HTML5- This attribute is used to indicate the number of characters to offset the column data from the alignment characters specified by the char attribute.
Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete (and not supported) in the latest standard.
span
- This attribute contains a positive integer indicating the number of consecutive columns the
<col>
element spans. If not present, its default value is1
.
valign
Deprecated since HTML4.01, Obsolete since HTML5- This attribute specifies the vertical alignment of the text within each cell of the column. Possible values for this attribute are:
baseline
, which will put the text as close to the bottom of the cell as it is possible, but align it on the baseline of the characters instead of the bottom of them. If characters are all of the size, this has the same effect asbottom
.bottom
, which will put the text as close to the bottom of the cell as it is possible;middle
, which will center the text in the cell;- and
top
, which will put the text as close to the top of the cell as it is possible.
Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete (and not supported) in the latest standard:- Do not try to set the
vertical-align
property on a selector giving a<col>
element. Because<td>
elements are not descendant of the<col>
element, they won't inherit it. - If the table doesn't use a
colspan
attribute, use thetd:nth-child(an+b)
CSS selector where a is the total number of the columns in the table and b is the ordinal position of the column in the table. Only after this selector thevertical-align
property can be used. - If the table does use a
colspan
attribute, the effect can be achieved by combining adequate CSS attribute selectors like[colspan=n]
, though this is not trivial.
width
Obsolete since HTML5- This attribute specifies a default width for each column in the current column group. In addition to the standard pixel and percentage values, this attribute might take the special form
0*
, which means that the width of each column in the group should be the minimum width necessary to hold the column's contents. Relative widths such as0.5*
also can be used.
Example
Please see the <table>
page for examples on <col>
.
Specifications
Specification | Status | Comment |
---|---|---|
WHATWG HTML Living Standard The definition of '<col>' in that specification. |
Living Standard | |
HTML5 The definition of '<col>' in that specification. |
Recommendation | |
HTML 4.01 Specification The definition of '<col>' in that specification. |
Recommendation | Initial definition |
Browser compatibility
Feature | Chrome | Edge | Firefox (Gecko) | Internet Explorer | Opera | Safari |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Basic support | 1.0 | (Yes) | 1.0 (1.7 or earlier) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) |
align/valign attribute |
? | (Yes) | No support bug 915 | ? | ? | ? |
char/charoff attribute |
? | (Yes) | No support bug 2212 | ? | ? | ? |
bgcolor attribute |
? | No support | No support | (Yes) | ? | ? |
Feature | Android | Edge | Firefox Mobile (Gecko) | IE Mobile | Opera Mobile | Safari Mobile |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Basic support | ? | (Yes) | 1.0 (1.0) | ? | ? | ? |
align/valign attribute |
? | (Yes) | No support bug 915 | ? | ? | ? |
char/charoff attribute |
? | (Yes) | No support bug 2212 | ? | ? | ? |
bgcolor attribute |
? | No support | No support | ? | ? | ? |
See also
- Other table-related HTML elements:
<caption>
,<colgroup>
,<table>
,<tbody>
,<td>
,<tfoot>
,<th>
,<thead>
,<tr>
; - CSS properties and pseudo-classes that may be specially useful to style the
<col>
element:- the
width
property to control the width of the column; - the
:nth-child
pseudo-class to set the alignment on the cells of the column; - the
text-align
property to align all cells content on the same character, like '.'.
- the
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Last updated by:
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