The HTML <thead>
element defines a set of rows defining the head of the columns of the table.
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Content categories | None. |
---|---|
Permitted content | Zero or more <tr> elements. |
Tag omission | The start tag is mandatory. The end tag may be omitted if the <thead> element is immediately followed by a <tbody> or <tfoot> element. |
Permitted parents | A <table> element. The <thead> must appear after any <caption> or <colgroup> element, even implicitly defined, but before any <tbody> , <tfoot> and <tr> element. |
Implicit ARIA role | rowgroup |
Permitted ARIA roles | Any |
DOM interface | HTMLTableSectionElement |
Attributes
This element includes the global attributes.
Deprecated attributes
align
in HTML 4, in HTML5- This enumerated attribute specifies how horizontal alignment of each 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, the
left
value is assumed.Note: Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete (not supported) in the latest standard.- To achieve the same effect as the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, use the CSStext-align
property on it. - 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<thead>
element should be styled using CSS. To give a similar effect to the bgcolor attribute, use the CSS propertybackground-color
, on the relevant<td>
or<th>
elements.
char
in HTML 4, in 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
in HTML 4, in 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.
valign
in HTML 4, in HTML5- This attribute specifies the vertical alignment of the text within each row of cells of the table header. 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;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: instead set the CSSvertical-align
property on it.
Examples
See <table>
for examples on <thead>
.
Specifications
Specification | Status | Comment |
---|---|---|
HTML Living Standard The definition of 'thead element' in that specification. |
Living Standard | |
HTML5 The definition of 'thead element' in that specification. |
Recommendation |
Browser compatibility
The compatibility table in this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.
Desktop | Mobile | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
thead | Chrome Full support 1 | Edge Full support 12 | Firefox Full support 1 | IE Full support Yes | Opera Full support Yes | Safari Full support Yes | WebView Android Full support Yes | Chrome Android Full support Yes | Firefox Android Full support 4 | Opera Android Full support Yes | Safari iOS Full support Yes | Samsung Internet Android Full support Yes |
align | Chrome ? | Edge Full support 12 | Firefox
No support
No
| IE Full support Yes | Opera ? | Safari ? | WebView Android ? | Chrome Android ? | Firefox Android
No support
No
| Opera Android ? | Safari iOS ? | Samsung Internet Android ? |
bgcolor | Chrome ? | Edge ? | Firefox No support No | IE Full support Yes | Opera ? | Safari ? | WebView Android ? | Chrome Android ? | Firefox Android No support No | Opera Android ? | Safari iOS ? | Samsung Internet Android ? |
char | Chrome ? | Edge Full support 12 | Firefox
No support
No
| IE Full support Yes | Opera ? | Safari ? | WebView Android ? | Chrome Android ? | Firefox Android
No support
No
| Opera Android ? | Safari iOS ? | Samsung Internet Android ? |
charoff | Chrome ? | Edge Full support 12 | Firefox
No support
No
| IE Full support Yes | Opera ? | Safari ? | WebView Android ? | Chrome Android ? | Firefox Android
No support
No
| Opera Android ? | Safari iOS ? | Samsung Internet Android ? |
valign | Chrome ? | Edge Full support 12 | Firefox
No support
No
| IE Full support Yes | Opera ? | Safari ? | WebView Android ? | Chrome Android ? | Firefox Android
No support
No
| Opera Android ? | Safari iOS ? | Samsung Internet Android ? |
Legend
- Full support
- Full support
- No support
- No support
- Compatibility unknown
- Compatibility unknown
- Deprecated. Not for use in new websites.
- Deprecated. Not for use in new websites.
- See implementation notes.
- See implementation notes.
See also
- Other table-related HTML Elements:
<caption>
,<col>
,<colgroup>
,<table>
,<tbody>
,<td>
,<tfoot>
,<th>
,<tr>
; - CSS properties and pseudo-classes that may be specially useful to style the
<thead>
element:- 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