HTML Table Borders: The Basics

The most basic issue concerning table borders is if there should be any borders at all. That issue is settled with the BORDER attribute to the <TABLE ...> tag.

By default, tables do not have borders. For example, this code, which does not have any attributes in the <TABLE ...> tag, produces a table with no borders: 

<TABLE>
<TR> <TD>watermelon</TD> <TD>grapes</TD> </TR>
<TR> <TD>peaches</TD> <TD>bananas</TD> </TR>
</TABLE>

which gives us

watermelongrapes
peachesbananas

To give the table borders we add the BORDER attribute to the <TABLE ...> tag: 

<TABLE BORDER>

which gives us this table

watermelon grapes
peaches bananas

BORDER sets the width of the outer border. So, for example, this code creates a table with an outside border width of 10: 

<TABLE BORDER=10>

which gives us this table

watermelon grapes
peaches bananas

Note that BORDER sets the width of the outside border. The width of the inside borders are set with CELLSPACING.

Table Borders: BORDER, FRAME and RULES >