CSS Tables and spacing - css

Question

I'm new to CSS tables, it's my first time. So I discovered that when you set display:table to a div, you can forgot all margin and padding (and whatever) you're planning on it's future cause they are ignored. Nice. The only property I've found to make this job is border-spacing but it is a little limited comparing with margin and padding. It have only two ways of styling, horizontal and vertical. You can't set the value of the side you want like border-spacing-left or border-spacing: 0 1px 2px 3px.
In my case, I have a table with one row that lies on the top right corner of the screen. I want it attached on the very top and spaced horizontally, which caused me problems. The top is okay but the right detaches from the border when I use border-spacing: 10px 0.
Smart guys like me don't see this as a problem, cause we can set it margin-right negatively, making it be attached again on the right side of the browser. Wow, whata smart ass I am!
However, I saw an little damn scrollbar on the bottom of the screen like a roach under your cooker at the kitchen. I hate roac.. scrollbars specially horizontals, so I got my inseticide called overflow-x and kil.. set it to hidden. She run desperately and dissapeared, but I know that she's there, somewhere staring at me. And this is driving me crazy.
Seriously now. I think this isn't the right way to do that and I hope somebody can teach me how to do it.
This is my scenario on Fiddle
Thank you in advance(mainly for reading this crap).

Answer 1

There are a few ways of achieving what you're trying to achieve. Most commonly, using display: table, display: table-cell, etc isn't very high on the list.
So, here's how I would do it: http://jsfiddle.net/VKnQZ/1/
Do bear in mind that I don't know the full circumstance of what you're attempting so it may well be that I'm missing a (valid) reason that you're using table display properties in the first place.
You'll notice a few things here:
I've done away with your table display properties. I don't think you need them, and floats do the job just fine (just remember to clear them).
I've removed your display from the cell divs. As someone in the comments above pointed out, divs inherit display: block by default. The additional dimensions set their size as you already had it.
I'm using the + selector to put in the spacing between elements. In this instance div + div is essentially short-hand for 'every div which is beside another div' - so all of them aside from the first.
Hopefully that achieves what you're aiming for and does away with all the nasty hacky overflow/margins/etc.
Here's the code:
HTML (only change is to remove the row div):
<div id="nav">
<div class="red"></div>
<div class="green"></div>
<div class="blue"></div>
</div>
CSS:
body {
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}
#nav {
float: right;
}
#nav div {
float: left;
width: 120px;
height: 40px;
}
#nav div + div{
margin-left: 10px;
}
.red { background-color:#f00 }
.green { background-color:#0f0 }
.blue { background-color:#00f }

Answer 2

and can you tell me why are you trying to imitate table behavior when you have "table" tag? it could be styled pretty well also
what you are doing is sometimes called "divitis"
edit:
you can position table absolutely http://jsfiddle.net/n83kT/

Answer 3

Not too sure if this the right place to discuss float and display :)
But , flex is on his way, and display is already quiet efficient.
Display + direction and you could kick floats away.
border-spacing version : http://jsfiddle.net/GCyrillus/2EZ3F/
border-left version : http://jsfiddle.net/GCyrillus/2EZ3F/1/
<section>
<div id="nav">
<div class="red"></div>
<div class="green"></div>
<div class="blue"></div>
</div>
</section>
section is to set direction .. or not
unset & reset direction to fake float ,
else use text-align if you dislike this method.
In CSSheet, notice inline-table instead of table so it reacts to text-align and or direction (not all pages are EN or FR :) )
body {
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}
section {
direction:rtl; /* unset regular if you wish, else text-align will do for inline-boxes */
}
#nav {
direction:ltr;/* reset/set here if you want cells from left to right */
display:inline-table;
border-spacing: 10px 0 ;
}
#nav div {
/*direction:ltr; reset here if you want cells from right to left */
display: table-cell;
width: 120px;
height: 40px;
}
#nav div + div {
margin-left: 10px;
}
.red {
background-color:#f00
}
.green {
background-color:#0f0
}
.blue {
background-color:#00f
}
My 2 (late) cents for a different point of view :)

Answer 4

For completeness, I would like to offer the case for the often overlooked inline-block display type.
Similar to the use of floats, the HTML is as follows:
<div id="nav">
<div class="red"></div>
<div class="green"></div>
<div class="blue"></div>
</div>
and the CSS:
#nav {
position:absolute;
top:0;
right:0;
}
#nav div {
width: 120px;
height: 40px;
display: inline-block;
vertical-align: bottom;
}
#nav div + div {
margin-left: 10px;
}
This inline-block approach behaves similarly to the floated-child-div's approach.
In this application, I can't think of a reason to use one over the other.
One minor consideration is that inline-block is not supported in some older browsers.
Otherwise, both approaches use the same mark-up and the CSS rules are similarly simple.
The choice may depend a lot on the content that you use in the #nav div elements.
Demo fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/audetwebdesign/EVJPN/