<!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>&nbsp;</td></tr>
  </table>
 </body>
</html>