Chapter 10, Lesson 6

If you already know how to disable word-wrapping within a table's cell, you can skip this lesson.

Normally,when the browser encounters lots of text within a cell, it adjusts the size of the cell as wide as possible to accommodate the entire text. If the cell size or table width has been specified explicitly, it word-wraps the text inside the cell, to keep the width constant, and makes the cell taller as required to accommodate the text. Sometimes, you might not want the cell made taller, but you don't mind it being made wider. By turning OFF word-wrapping within the cell, the cell will then be made as wide as it needs to be to accommodate the text (even beyond the width of the screen).

To turn OFF word-wrapping within a cell, use one of these formats, as appropriate:

<TD NOWRAP> (for table-data cells)
or
<TH NOWRAP> (for table-heading cells)

The 'NOWRAP' attribute does not take a value; its mere presence in the opening tag for the cell indicates that word-wrapping should be turned off.

Now let's see some examples demonstrated:

<TABLE BORDER=5>
<TR><TH>Ditty No 1</TH>
<TD>The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog about a hundred 
million times before the canine snaps his wise-acre head right off 
(messy, very messy... not a pretty sight, I assure you)</TD></TR>
<TR><TH>Ditty No 2</TH>
<TD>Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers; how many 
pecks of pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?  And more importantly, 
what motivated this compulsion in the first place?</TD></TR>
</TABLE>
<P>
Here's the same table with width set at 50% of screen (word-wrapping ON by default):
<P>
<TABLE BORDER=5 WIDTH=50%>
<TR><TH>Ditty No 1</TH>
<TD>The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog about a hundred 
million times before the canine snaps his wise-acre head right off 
(messy, very messy... not a pretty sight, I assure you)</TD></TR>
<TR><TH>Ditty No 2</TH>
<TD>Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers; how many 
pecks of pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?  And more importantly, 
what motivated this compulsion in the first place?</TD></TR>
</TABLE>
<P>
Here's a table with word-wrapping turned OFF in all the cells:
<P>
<TABLE BORDER=5>
<TR><TH NOWRAP>Ditty No 1</TH>
<TD NOWRAP>The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog 
about a hundred million times before the canine snaps his wise-acre 
head right off (messy, very messy... not a pretty sight, I assure you)</TD></TR>
<TR><TH NOWRAP>Ditty No 2</TH>
<TD NOWRAP>Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers; 
how many pecks of pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?  And 
more importantly, what motivated this compulsion in the first place?</TD></TR>
</TABLE>
<P>
Here's a table with word-wrapping turned OFF and all the cells in one row:
<P>
<TABLE BORDER=5>
<TR><TH NOWRAP>Ditty No 1 and Ditty No 2</TH>
<TD NOWRAP>The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog 
about a hundred million times before the canine snaps his wise-acre 
head right off (messy, very messy... not a pretty sight, I assure you)</TD>
<TD NOWRAP>Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers; 
how many pecks of pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?  And 
more importantly, what motivated this compulsion in the first place?</TD></TR>
</TABLE>
<P>
Here's a reasonable use of word-wrapping:
<P>
<TABLE BORDER=5 WIDTH=50%>
<TR><TH NOWRAP>Ditty No 1</TH>
<TD>The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog about a hundred 
million times before the canine snaps his wise-acre head right off 
(messy, very messy... not a pretty sight, I assure you)</TD></TR>
<TR><TH NOWRAP>Ditty No 2</TH>
<TD>Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers; how many pecks 
of pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?  And more importantly, what 
motivated this compulsion in the first place?</TD></TR>
</TABLE>

Here's a table with default settings (word-wrapping ON by default):

Ditty No 1	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog about a hundred million times before the canine snaps his wise-acre head right off (messy, very messy... not a pretty sight, I assure you)
Ditty No 2	Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers; how many pecks of pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick? And more importantly, what motivated this compulsion in the first place?

Here's the same table with width set at 50% of screen (word-wrapping ON by default):

Ditty No 1	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog about a hundred million times before the canine snaps his wise-acre head right off (messy, very messy... not a pretty sight, I assure you)
Ditty No 2	Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers; how many pecks of pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick? And more importantly, what motivated this compulsion in the first place?

Here's a table with word-wrapping turned OFF in all the cells:

Ditty No 1	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog about a hundred million times before the canine snaps his wise-acre head right off (messy, very messy... not a pretty sight, I assure you)
Ditty No 2	Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers; how many pecks of pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick? And more importantly, what motivated this compulsion in the first place?

Here's a table with word-wrapping turned OFF and all the cells in one row:

Ditty No 1 and Ditty No 2	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog about a hundred million times before the canine snaps his wise-acre head right off (messy, very messy... not a pretty sight, I assure you)	Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers; how many pecks of pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick? And more importantly, what motivated this compulsion in the first place?

Here's a reasonable use of the 'NOWRAP' attribute:

Ditty No 1	The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog about a hundred million times before the canine snaps his wise-acre head right off (messy, very messy... not a pretty sight, I assure you)
Ditty No 2	Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers; how many pecks of pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick? And more importantly, what motivated this compulsion in the first place?

Let's look at the tables we demonstrated and see how they behaved:

• The first table had four cells, two of which had lots of text. Since we had not specified any attributes (except the border), the browser generated the table on the basis of it's default rules. Notice how the table was made as wide as the screen, but no wider, and text was wrapped to the next line as required. Notice also, that in wrapping the text, the browser made the cell taller to accommodate it.
• In the second table, we specified a table 'WIDTH' of 50%, but no other attributes were specified. Again, the browser relied on its default rules, except that this time it limited the table width to 50% of screen width. In the process, it had to extend the table downward to accommodate the word-wrapped text. Also, it probably word-wrapped the first column, even though there were only 3 words, because it was trying to use space as efficiently as possible, to minimize the table size vertically.
• In the third table, we specified 'NOWRAP' in all cells. When we did, the browser wrote the data off the right side of the screen, where we would have to scroll in order to see it. However, this had the advantage (if you consider it that) of keeping the table very short (vertically). There may be times when you want to make sure that a row stays a single row, and the 'NOWRAP' attribute helps you do this.
• In the fourth table, we placed all the data cells on one row, and we told all cells 'NOWRAP'. But since the second cell had so much text in it, we couldn't even tell that there was a third cell which also had text, because it was off-screen. Scroll to the right and see if you can find that third cell. That's a lot of scrolling, huh? The moral here is that if you are going to specify 'NOWRAP', try to assure that there won't be any columns lost off to the right where they can be missed by the observer. (or at least tell the observer where they are...)
• In the last table, we show a reasonable use of the 'NOWRAP' attribute. Remember the second table, where the browser word wrapped the first data cell, even though it was only 3 words? We'll use the 'NOWRAP' attribute in those cells, so that the 3 words that make up the row heading aren't split-up. But the rest of the cells will be allowed to wrap downward in the usual way.

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