title: Is html <COL align> deprecated?
body: <p>i'm looking at the <a href="http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_col_test" rel="noreferrer">W3Schools demo of using the <code>&lt;COL&gt;</code> element to align columns</a>:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;table width="100%" border="1"&gt;
    &lt;col align="left" /&gt;
    &lt;col align="left" /&gt;
    &lt;col align="right" /&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;
      &lt;th&gt;ISBN&lt;/th&gt;
      &lt;th&gt;Title&lt;/th&gt;
      &lt;th&gt;Price&lt;/th&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;3476896&lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;My first HTML&lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;$53&lt;/td&gt;
    &lt;/tr&gt;
  &lt;/table&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And browser's rendering of it is not encouraging:</p>
  
  <p>Chrome (10.0.648.127):<br>
  <img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/mEmdi.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
  
  <p>FireFox (3.6.8):<br>
  <img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/x1Y81.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
  
  <p>Internet Explorer 9 (standards mode):<br>
  <img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/DsZHT.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
  
  <p>Internet Explorer 8 (standards mode):<br>
  <img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/6ZMZj.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
  
  <p>Internet Explorer 7 (standards mode):<br>
  <img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/7g4cq.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
  
  <p>Internet Explorer (quirks mode):
  <img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/WRad5.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
  
  <p>It's interesting to note that <code>&lt;COL align&gt;</code> <strong>used</strong> to work in browsers, and the feature was <em>taken away</em> in ie8. (And Chrome, with position of being the  arbiter of all things perfect, doesn't support it.) </p>
  
  <p>This makes me wonder if <code>&lt;COL align&gt;</code> is something that's not <strong>supposed</strong> to work.</p>
  
  <p>Has <code>&lt;COL align&gt;</code> been deprecated?</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <h2>Update One</h2>
  
  <p>i understand that it hasn't been formally deprecated. But the fact that browsers <strong>used</strong> to support it, then <strong>stopped</strong> supporting it makes me believe that there is some historical story that i'm missing. i assume the intentional removal of <code>col align</code> support from IE, and the continued lack of support from other browsers, indicates something is going on.</p>
  
  <h2>Update Two</h2>
  
  <p>i was mistakenly assuming lack of support for all features of <code>&lt;COL&gt;</code> meant <code>&lt;COL&gt;</code> itself isn't supported. i mistakenly assumed that since the only attribute i was trying wasn't working: that the element wasn't working. This was my mistake; and in hindsight i <strong>should</strong> have asked if "COL align" is deprecated (which it is). </p>
  
  <p>In my defense i assumed an example would have been shown what wasn't working "anymore".</p>
  
  <h2>See also</h2>
  
  <ul>
  <li><a href="http://htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/tables/col.html" rel="noreferrer">Web Design Group: COL - Table Column</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_col.asp" rel="noreferrer">W3Schools: HTML <code>&lt;col&gt;</code> tag</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/tables.html#edef-COL" rel="noreferrer">HTML 4.01 - The <code>col</code> element</a></li>
  </ul>