Dynamic table formatting

Table caption
1^st col. & row	2^nd col. thead	3^rd col.	4^th col.	5^th col.
2^nd row	thead	abcd	abcd	abcd
5^th row	tfoot	a	b	c
3^rd row	tbody	abc	abc	abc
4^th row	tbody	ab	ab	ab

Column alignment

1^st col	2^nd col	3^rd col	4^th col	5^th col

Row alignment

1^st row
2^nd row
3^rd row
4^th row
5^th row

Table alignment left
center
right
Note 1

Cell alignment left
center
right
Note 2

Rules none
groups
cols
rows
all
border collapse
Note 3

Frame void box
above below
hsides (horizontal sides)
lhs (left hand side)
rhs (right hand side)
vsides (vertical sides)

Table border

Cell border

Cellspacing

Caption position and alignment

Caption side

Alignment

Table directionLeft to rightRight to left

1^stcol	2^nd col.	3^rd col.	4^th col.	5^th col.
vis.	col.	vis.	col.	vis.	col.	vis.	col.	vis.	col.

W3C HTML 4.01,
Section 11.3 Table formatting by visual user agents
11.3.2 Horizontal and vertical alignment
Inheritance of alignment specifications
"The default alignment for cells depends on the user agent. However, user agents should substitute the default attribute for the current directionality (i.e., not just 'left' in all cases)."

If you insert the "direction: rtl;" css rule to the body or html tag of this file, you'll see that not only the text is formatted from right to left but the horizontal alignment formating is right aligned as well.

W3C CSS level 1,
Section 4 Formatting model
4.1.2 Horizontal formatting
"(...) if both 'margin-left' and 'margin-right' are 'auto', they will be set to equal values. This will center the element inside its parent."

W3C CSS level 2.1,
Section 10 Visual formatting model details
10.3.3 Block-level, non-replaced elements in normal flow
"If both 'margin-left' and 'margin-right' are 'auto', their used values are equal. This horizontally centers the element with respect to the edges of the containing block."

Most people embed a table within a <div style="text-align: center;">; not only the table is centered but the content of <td>s is also align-centered. Many people misuse <[block-level element] style="text-align: center;"> to center nested elements while the original purpose of text-align:center is to center the text within.

Further reading on this precise issue:
Centering: Auto-width Margins at BLUEROBOT.COM site!

Note 3: Rules attribute values groups, cols, rows should only be rendered when in border-collapse: collapse model.
"In this model [border-collapse: separate model], (...) Rows, columns, row groups, and column groups cannot have borders (i.e., user agents must ignore the border properties for those elements). (...) In the collapsing border model, it is possible to specify borders that surround all or part of a cell, row, row group, column, and column group. Borders for HTML's 'rules' attribute can be specified this way."
CSS 2, Section 17.6.1 The separated borders model (border-collapse)
CSS 2.1, Section 17.6.1 The separated borders model (border-collapse)

Note 4: there is a bug in Opera 7.x involving logical versus document order of rows which will affect the working of this DHTML for the last 3 rows.

Incompatibilities and bugs in this page

Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7 have many many bugs
The css property border-spacing is not supported by MSIE 6.
Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7 should NOT render rules="cols|rows|groups" when border-collapse is separate. CSS 2.x is decisively clear on this precise matter.
In Mozilla-based browsers and in Opera 7.x, borders collapse when rules="all" is declared (Bug 155507 target: Future)
border collapse doesn't work when visibility: collapse is active (Bug 242997)
visibility: collapse causes incorrect overflow area to be reported (Bug 242998)
HTMLCollection of RefTable.rows[] sequential order should be according to the display (logical) order, not document order (bug 125284 in Opera's BTS)
HTMLCollection of RefTable.rows[] sequential order should be according to the display (logical) order, not document order in Safari and Konqueror: rows in footer must be last in rows HTMLCollection regardless of document order (bug 4571 at WebKit Bugzilla)
[BC] border styles not updated properly after changed via DOM.(Bug 258377)

Remaining to do:

Remove cell borders select when rules="none" is selected
Synchronize rules radio buttons visibility with the state of the border-collapse checkbox based on http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/tables.html#separated-borders which goes:
"In this (separated border) model, each cell has an individual border. (...) Rows, columns, row groups, and column groups cannot have borders (i.e., user agents must ignore the border properties for those elements)."
Add rowgroups (THead, TBody and TFoot) visibility fieldset
Tune the coding of RefobjCaption.vAlign = "top|bottom" accordingly in both selects accordingly for MSIE 6
Implement a select for cellpadding?
Create deleteCaption, deleteTHead, deleteTFoot, deleteRow buttons?

Rowgroup	Visible	Collapse
THead
TBody
TFoot