Core Skills Activity #8: Tables

Mark Newhouse

Part 1

Below are two slightly different versions of the table I created for the first part of the assignment. What I am not sure about - and maybe it doesn't matter - is how to handle the situation where a COLSPAN or ROWSPAN makes sense. In the example table in the tutorial, there is a separation within the same row, and the SCOPE attribute is used to tie it all together. In my example(s) I have also used the SCOPE attribute, but I am not sure if using ROWSPAN changes things or not.

This first TABLE does not use ROWSPAN, but ends up creating empty table cells to keep everything aligned.

This version uses ROWSPANs to eliminate the need for empty table cells.

Part 2

This is the TABLE for the University of the Antarctic Schedule of Classes. Here I used the SCOPE attribute to group COLs and ROWGROUPs. I also used IDs and HEADERS to tie the Department Code to its appropriate heading. My question here is, for straightforward relationships like the column heading applying to the rest of the column, does it mean the same thing when using SCOPE as it does to give the THs an ID and then use HEADERS with the ID on each subsequent TD in the column? Is one technique more well understood by current browser/screen reader combinations than another? Or am I completely misunderstanding what each technique does?

Also, I used the ABBR attribute to expand the Department Codes from "BIO" to "Biology," for example. Is that an appropriate use? I know that the ABBR tag is used that way. It seems to make sense to me - especially in this case, where codes such as "IS" are likely to be read as "is" rather than "eye ess."

At any rate, here is my version of the table:

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