CSS to make an empty cell's border appear? - css

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.

Related

Elements inside <td style="

I'm trying to put the colspan, valign and align in the following piece
<td style="background-color:#000333" colspan="4" valign="middle" align="center">
all inside the style="...", to have something like:
<td style="background-color:#000333;colspan:4;valign:'middle'; align:'center'>
Is there any way to do this?
You will be unable to achieve colpan results with CSS I stand corrected, you can in CSS3. But text-align:center will get and vertical-align:middle for vertical alignment.
With that said, please consider using proper CSS rather than stuffing things into the style tags, that will make your (and everybody else's) job much easier in the future. That is as simple as saying
<td class='myclass'>
and then inside your CSS file
td.myclass
{
text-align:center;
vertical-align:middle;
}
You cannot do that because there is no way in CSS to do the job of colspan (except in a special case where its value equals the total number of columns, and even then only using a proposed CSS extension that does not work consistently across modern browsers, not to mention old browsers).

Consistent positioning of <table> element across modern browsers

I have two <table> elements, and I want to arrange them vertically in a specific way by making the second <table> shift horizontally by a fixed amount of pixels.
For example:
<table id="table1" align="center">
...
</table>
<table id="table2" style="padding-left: 130px;">
...
</table>
However, I've found that in different browsers (e.g. Chrome vs Safari) the padding-left attribute causes slightly different results (i.e. while the second table appears fine in one browser, it is 2 or 3 pixels off the desired result in another browser). Is there any way to make this positioning consistent across all modern browsers? Preferably, a CSS-only solution is better.
Consider a CSS reset on padding and margin, browsers have default values for these, and the values are not the same across all browsers. The default values could be interfering your expected behavior.
* {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
More on CSS reset: http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/

strange IE8 css issue

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).

display:table-row not working

I have a client form which includes HTML served up from an iframe - I can't edit it. The only thing I can do is apply CSS edits.
I'm trying to apply a simple adjustment which would stack the <td>s in the form so
1. What is your age?
becomes
1.
What is your age?
If you right click the first question and Inspect Element you'll see the rather interesting DOM structure I get to work with. This example it looks like this:
<div id="Age" class="questionlabel">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<span class="questionnumber_questionlabel">1. </span>
</td>
<td>
<label class="required">What is your age?</label>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
When I inspect that <td> and add a display:table-row; it completely ignores me. This is in Chrome - I can replicate this DOM and get the CSS to do what I want in jsfiddle so I'm thinking there is a reset somewhere I can't see. I even tried display:table-row !important; to no avail. I can apply border:2px solid blue; no problem. I can apply display:none; no problem.
Any ideas as to what is going on here that would prevent this simple CSS param from working?
To re-iterate the ONLY thing I can do is apply CSS - No JavaScript and no HTML edits. Basically I pass in a CSS file in the url to the iFrame. That's all I get. Thanks!
EDIT: I apologize I had to remove the link to the example form on the live site.
Edit - screenshots had to be removed, but the solution is still valid.
Added this code to form-css.css, using Firebug. Beginning or end, it did not matter:
table#form_table div.questionlabel td {display: table-row !important;}
.questionnumber_questionlabel {margin: inherit!important;}
(Note: I reset that margin as the old one (-10px) was causing unsightly overlap.)

What is the proper CSS way to implement right-aligned text on table columns?

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?

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