n.b. This concerns HTML-email coding (limitations apply)
For example in the Mail Chimp email template I'm working with there is this:
<td valign="middle" width="140" style="vertical-align:middle; text-align: left;">
I guess they're covering bases but when should one use valign="top" and when do I use style="vertical-align: top;" (and when use both)?
What's the history that leads to this confusing state of style assignment?
valign is deprecated and should not be used in newer applications, as its support is not guaranteed to be there in future versions of current browsers. vertical-align is the recommended CSS way of vertically aligning content.
See this link for details: http://phrogz.net/css/vertical-align/index.html
Since valign is deprecated, some email clients might not render it. So, there's the inline CSS fallback (since HTML emails require inline CSS).
I think the main reason why it is used in this case is so that no matter what, the <td> is being vertically aligned in the middle.
I have a header row which has this structure:
<th...
<a...
<span...
{text}
If you look at the attachement, you will notice that all the headers with this structure are aligned.
Well, when a specific header is clicked for "sorted" status, the structure will be like:
<th...
<a...
<span...
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
{text}
</td>
<td>
<div> //with a background image
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Well, in IE8 this sorted column is no longer aligned (see the screenshot please).
I've tried a lot to put some css style (position:relative, etc) to the table inside the span to fix the alignment in IE8 but I failed..
Is here any css guru which can suggest a fix?
Please note that I can NOT change this structure (its some generated code from ICEfaces library) but I can apply css attributes (if I know where...).
Also, there is no css difference (some specific important style) to the sorted column applied. Just plain table inside that span.
Thanks.
Check the vertical-align property, maybe. Here, judging by the screencap, it seems to be in default mode, 'baseline'. (I'm not sure it will do much, though)
Try :
th.stuff {
vertical-align:top;
}
or :
th.stuff {
vertical-align:middle;
}
Also you could make all th slightly higher and gain somme padding to align the content. I think the problem, overall; commes from the select that appears in the th, inside the table.
You can use IE specific style sheets. They are known as conditional style sheets.
http://css-tricks.com/132-how-to-create-an-ie-only-stylesheet/
The idea of course would be to change the CSS for that element for IE only (because it does work already with other browsers).
I'm trying to give even spacing all around images I have in a table, and it's not working too well.
Look at the page. I tried margin, padding, everything I could on lots of different types of properties, but no luck. Any help?
The table has been created in an unusual way by photoshop - resulting in dodgey markup.
There a differing amount of <td>'s in the first row compared to the others
There are several spacer images which have been created by photoshop; which are redundant
There should be no need for the use of rowspans in your <td>'s
To fix this issue I would suggest modifying your table so the structure looks like this:
<table cellpadding="5">
<tr>
<td><img src="images/index_01.png" width="463" height="200" alt=""></td>
<td ><img src="images/index_02.png" width="465" height="200" alt=""></td>
</tr>
....
Then keep adding blocks of table rows e.g.:
<tr>
<td>... </td>
<td>...</td>
</tr>
with your links and images replacing the '...'. then finally close the table:
</table>
Hope this helps.
The problem is your rowspan="2" on your second cell... remove that and the spacing evens out. You may also want the following CSS (tested with Firefox/firebug rewrites)
<style>
#Table_01,#Table_01 a {margin:0;padding:0;}
#Table_01 img {padding:1em;}
</style>
Try specifying value for cellpadding attribute for the table.
Your markup is all wrong. You have TDs using rowspan when its not needed and i see some spacer gifs. Fix the markup and you wont have any issues with using cellpadding
To my surprise I just found out that applying text-alignment to a table column is fairly bad supported in current browsers. Neither Firefox 3.5.2, Safari 4.0.3 or IE8 shows the "amount" column below as right aligned.
HTML:
<table class="full_width">
<caption>Listing employees of department X</caption>
<col></col>
<col></col>
<col></col>
<col class="amount" width="180"></col>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Name</th>
<th>Phone number</th>
<th>Email</th>
<th>Salary</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>John Doe</td>
<td>+45 2373 6220</td>
<td>john#doe.com</td>
<td>20000</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
CSS
.amount{
text-align: right;
}
Why isn't this working? Also I tried (via firebug) to turn off Firefox' native rule that left-aligns TD elements, but that didn't work either.
I can see that setting background color rule in the amount css class actually works. So I know that the .amount class is applied to all columns:
CSS
.amount{
text-align: right;
background-color: aqua;
}
The CSS 2 spec apparently says that only four attributes are supported by col element -- see Why is styling table columns not allowed?
Criteria for selecting the best solution: must be supported fairly cross-browser (not necessarily in IE6 where I could live with using jquery or a conditional comment to include a specific solution). Also, I expect to apply multiple classes multiple different columns (ie. class="amount before_tax")
I'd hate to set classes on the relevant td in each row. What are my options?
I'd hate to set classes on the
relevant td in each row. What are my
options?
That would be it: class on each td.
If you don't want to add the class to each cell in a column manually, your only other option is to use javascript to do it.
With jQuery:
$("table tbody tr td:eq(3)").addClass("amount");
You can always set a class on on the last element in a row:
.full_width td:last-child {
text-align: right;
}
you have to set the class on the td elements. I think that's the only way.
Your answers got me thinking about creating a JQuery script that parses COL elements. Then it should find each row matching the corresponding COL and apply the COL class to each element like so:
enter code here$("table tbody tr td:eq(3)").addClass("amount");
But only do it, (as a performance improvement), if the class definition contains a text-align in it.
Of course, a full complex implementation of colspan and COLGROUP elements will be overkill and most likely not supported.
Any thoughts on that idea?
What CSS should I use to make a cell's border appear even if the cell is empty?
IE 7 specifically.
If I recall, the cell dosn't exist in some IE's unless it's filled with something...
If you can put a (non-breaking space) to fill the void, that will usually work. Or do you require a pure CSS solution?
Apparently, IE8 shows the cells by default, and you have to hide it with empty-cells:hide But it doesn't work at all in IE7 (which hides by default).
Another way of making sure there is data in all cells:
$(document).ready(function() {
$("td:empty").html(" ");
});
If you set the border-collapse property to collapse, IE7 will show empty cells. It also collapses the borders though so this might not be 100% what you want
td {
border: 1px solid red;
}
table {
border-collapse: collapse;
}
<html> <head> <title>Border-collapse Test</title> <style type="text/css"> td {
border: 1px solid red;
}
table {
border-collapse: collapse;
}
<table>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>test</td>
<td>test</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>test</td>
<td></td>
<td>test</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>test</td>
<td></td>
<td>test</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>test</td>
<td></td>
<td />
</tr>
</table>
The question asked for a CSS solution, but on the off-chance an HTML solution will do, here is one:
Try adding these two attributes to the table element: frame="box" rules="all"
like this:
<table border="1" cellspacing="0" frame="box" rules="all">
I just found the following. It's standards compliant but it doesn't work in IE. sigh.
empty-cells: show
I happened across this question and haven't seen any answers that really addressed the issue.
The problem results because IE7 does not see any internal content for the cell; in programming terms the cell is resulting as a null and like most things, you cannot border a null or perform any action on it. The browser needs an element/object that has a layout, in order to apply a border/layout.
Even empty <div></div> or <span></span> do not contain content, thus there is nothing to render, resulting in that null case again.
However, you can trick the browser into thinking the cell has content, by giving the empty div/span layout properties. The easiest way is to apply the CSS style zoom:1.
<table>
<tr><td>Foo</td>
<td><span style="zoom:1;"></span></td></tr>
</table>
This workaround is better than using a , since it doesn't unnecessarily mess up screen readers, and isn't misrepresenting the value of the cell. In newer browser you can use the empty-cell:<show|hide> alternative.
Note: in lieu of Tomalak's comment, it should be understood that hasLayout has nothing to do with null, it was merely a comparison of how the browser interacts and renders hasLayout similarly to how a database or programming language interacts with nulls. It is a strech, but I thought it might be easier to understand for those programmers turned web designers.
Ideally, you shouldn't have any empty cells in a table. Either you have a table of data, and there's no data in that specific cell (which you should indicate with "-", or "n/a/", or something equally appropriate, or - if you must - , as suggested), or you have a cell that needs to span a column or row, or you're trying to achieve some layout with a table that you should be using CSS for.
Can we have a bit more detail?
This question's old, but still a top result in Google, so I'll add what I've found:
Simply adding border-collapse: collapse to the table style fixed this problem for me in IE7 (and didn't affect the way they're displayed in FF, Chrome, etc).
Best to avoid the extraneous code of adding an or other spacing element when you can fix with CSS.
I guess this can't be done with CSS;
You need to put a in every empty cell for the border to show in IE...
empty-cell only fixed Firefox (YES I really did have this issue in Firefox) IE 7 & 8 were still problematic..
This worked for me in both Firefox 3.6.x, IE 7 & 8, Chrome, and Safari:
==============================
table {
*border-collapse: collapse;}
.sampleTD {
empty-cells: show;}
==============================
Had to use the * to make sure the table style was only applied to the IE browser.
Try this if you can't use non-breakable space:
var tn = document.createTextNode('\ ');
yourContainer.appendChild(ta);
I create a div style that has the same font color as the background of your cell and write anything (usually a "-" "n/a" or "empty") to give the cell content. It shows up if you highlight the page, but when viewed normally looks how you want.
I use a mix of html and css to create cross browser table grids:
html
<table cellspacing="1" style="background-color:#000;" border="0">
css
td{background-color:#fff;}
I haven't seen any issues with any browsers so far.
"IE" isn't a useful term in this context anymore now that IE8 is out.
IE7 always does "empty-cells:show" (or so I'm told ... Vista).
IE8 in any of its "Quirks" or "IE7 Standards" modes always does "empty-cells:hide".
IE8 in "Standards" mode defaults to "empty-cells:show" and supports the attribute via CSS.
As far as I know, every other browser has correctly supported this for several years (I know it was added in Firefox 2).
I'm taking this from another website but:
.sampletable {
border-collapse: collapse;}
.sampleTD {
empty-cells: show;}
Use for the CSS for the table and TD element respectively.