table-examples

Table Examples

As the first stage of the microformats process, this page collects examples of best/common practice for using the table tag to represent structured data.

The Problem

Thought often abused for layout, the original purpose of HTML tables is to provide a two-dimensional structure for data. The purpose of this exploration is to determine if there are common patterns for annotationg those structures, and (if so) whether there is a need to formalize that as a microformat (a la xoxo for lists). The working hypothesis is tables typically represent two kinds of data:

• a list of dictionaries (with column headers, and sometimes row headers)
• a grid of numerical data (without any headers, or merely numeric indices)

Participants

• Dr. Ernie

Real-World Examples

• Best practices for marking up tabular data (especially for accessibility)