<THEAD>

<THEAD...>

This element, which is Internet Explorer specific, is used to specify the head section of the table. It is somewhat analogous to the <HEAD> element. It doesn't directly affect the rendering of the table on the screen, but is required if RULES wish to be set in the <TABLE>.

Possible <THEAD> attributes are:

ALIGN="Alignment"
The ALIGN attribute takes values of center, left and right, and specifies the alignment of the <THEAD> section relative to the rest of the table.

BGCOLOR="Background Colour"
Background colouring can be applied to the <THEAD> section, by using the BGCOLOR attribute. It accepts any valid #rrggbb hex triplet, or Colour Name.

TITLE="informational ToolTip"
The Internet Explorer 4.0 (and above) specific TITLE attribute is used for informational purposes. The <THEAD> element does not display its TITLE attribute as a ToolTip.

LANG="language setting"
The LANG attribute can be used to specify what language the <THEAD> element is using. It accepts any valid ISO standard language abbreviation (for example "en" for English, "de" for German etc.) For more details, see the Document Localisation section for more details.

LANGUAGE="Scripting language"
The LANGUAGE attribute can be used to expressly specify which scripting language Internet Explorer 4.0 uses to interpret any scripting information used in the <THEAD> element. It can accept values of vbscript, vbs, javascript or jscript. The first two specify the scripting language as Visual Basic Script, the latter two specify it as using Javascript (the default scripting language used if no LANGUAGE attribute is set.

CLASS="Style Sheet class name"
The CLASS attribute is used to specify the <THEAD> element as using a particular style sheet class. See the Style Sheets topic for details.

STYLE="In line style setting"
As well as using previously defined style sheet settings, the <THEAD> element can have in-line stylings attached to it. See the Style Sheets topic for details.

ID="Unique element identifier"
The ID attribute can be used to either reference a unique style sheet identifier, or to provide a unique name for the <THEAD> element for scripting purposes. Any <THEAD> element with an ID attribute can be directly manipulated in script by referencing its ID attribute, rather than working through the All collection to determine the element. See the Scripting introduction topic for more information.

VALIGN="Vertical Alignment"
The VALIGN attribute takes values of baseline, bottom, middle and top, and specifies the vertical alignment of the <THEAD> section relative to the rest of the table.

Every <THEAD> element in a document is an object that can be manipulated through scripting. Note that scripting of the <THEAD> element/object is only supported by Internet Explorer 4.0 in its Dynamic HTML object model. Netscape does not support direct scripting of the <THEAD> element at all.

<THEAD...> Properties
Of the standard Dynamic HTML properties, the <THEAD...> element/object supports the following className, document, id, isTextEdit, lang, language, offsetHeight, offsetLeft, offsetParent, offsetTop, offsetWidth, parentElement, parentTextEdit, sourceIndex, style, tagName and title. Details of these can be found in the standard Dynamic HTML properties topics.
The <THEAD> element also supports properties of align, bgColor and vAlign, which reflect their attribute settings.

<THEAD...> Methods
Of the standard Dynamic HTML methods, the <THEAD...> element/object supports the following: click, contains, getAttribute, removeAttribute, scrollIntoView and setAttribute). Details of these can be found in the standard Dynamic HTML Methods topics. Additionally, the <THEAD> element supports the following methods:

deleteRow
The deleteRow method deletes the row referenced by the index argument for the referenced <THEAD> element, also removing it from the Rows Collection for the <THEAD> and <TABLE> elements.

document.all("theadExample").deleteRow(1)

would delete the second <TR> element contained in the <THEAD> element referenced by ...all("theadExample"), impacting the Rows Collection for the <THEAD> and <TABLE> elements.

insertRow
The insertRow method inserts a new <TR> element into the referenced <THEAD> element. It can take an optional index argument which should specify where in the <THEAD> the new row is to be inserted. Note that inserting a new row into a <THEAD> element also inserts it into the Rows Collection for the <THEAD> element and the Rows Collection for the <TABLE>. For example:

rowNew=document.all("theadExample").insertRow(3)

inserts a new fourth row into the <THEAD> element, which will impact the Rows Collection for the <THEAD> and <TABLE> elements.

<THEAD...> Events
The <THEAD...> element/object supports all of the standard Dynamic HTML events (i.e. onclick, ondblclick, ondragstart, onfilterchange, onhelp, onkeydown, onkeypress, onkeyup, onmousedown, onmousemove, onmouseout, onmouseover, onmouseup and onselectstart). Details of these can be found in the standard Dynamic HTML events topics.