<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"> <html> <head> <title>col removal</title> <script type="text/javascript"> function foo () { var out =document.getElementById('outer'); var int =document.getElementById('inner'); out.removeChild(int); } </script> </head> <body onload="foo()"> <table border> <colgroup width="500px" id="outer"> <col width="200px" id="inner"> </colgroup> <tr><td> </td></tr> </table> </body> </html>