Currency table in CSS - css

Question

I have a table and I need to format the currency in order for the . to be displayed always under each other.
This is the table:
<table class="data" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Date</th>
<th>Description</th>
<th>Field1</th>
<th>Field2</th>
<th>Balance</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr class="verticalDivider"></tr>
<tr>
<td>08 April 2010</td>
<td>value 1</td>
<td>GBP 20.00</td>
<td> </td>
<td>GBP 20.00</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>08 May 2010</td>
<td>value 2</td>
<td>GBP 100.00</td>
<td> </td>
<td>GBP 1020.00</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>19 May 2010</td>
<td>value 3</td>
<td> </td>
<td>GBP 50.00</td>
<td>GBP 970.00</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

How does this look?
<style type="text/css">
.price {
text-align: right;
}
</style>
<table class="data" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Date</th>
<th>Description</th>
<th>Field1</th>
<th>Field2</th>
<th>Balance</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr class="verticalDivider"></tr>
<tr>
<td>08 April 2010</td>
<td>value 1</td>
<td class="price">GBP 20.00</td>
<td> </td>
<td class="price">GBP 20.00</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>08 May 2010</td>
<td>value 2</td>
<td class="price">GBP 100.00</td>
<td> </td>
<td class="price">GBP 1020.00</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>19 May 2010</td>
<td>value 3</td>
<td> </td>
<td class="price">GBP 50.00</td>
<td class="price">GBP 970.00</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Answer 2

assuming you'll always print 2 decimal digits, I would define all my table <col /> then I'd assign text-align : right to that cols that contain prices (and padding-right to create space from border)
otherwise as specified in http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/tables.html#h-11.3.2 you could assign align="char" char="." to table cols (if you browser support it)

Answer 3

To have the currency symbol (GBP) AND the dots aligned you can do the following (tested on Chrome and Firefox, breaks on IE):
CSS file:
...
td.money {
text-align: right;
}
.currencySymbol {
float: left;
}
...
And your table cell would look like:
<td class="money">
<div class="currencySymbol">GBP</div>
970.00
</td>
Although it's dangerous (probably the reason why it breaks on IE), see: Is a DIV inside a TD a bad idea?

Answer 4

<td align="right">GBP 20.00</td>
<td align="right">GBP 100.00</td>
<td align="right"> </td>
I Guess thats what you are looking for as long as thee is ".00". If I were you, I would start using css even for this bit of code where you need to edit 3 places instead of one.