CSS Tables to Inherit

He has: 52 posts

Joined: Apr 2006

What CSS property will allow all of my cells in my table to separate (as in margin, I believe), without defining a class for all of the cells/rows? Am I able to do that with just a table property?

Thanks.

~Max

JeevesBond's picture

He has: 3,956 posts

Joined: Jun 2002

Hmmm, the simplest way is:

td {
    margin: 1em;
}
'
However, that will affect all td's on your page. Probably a better way is this:
<table id="tablewotholdsstuffandthat">
<tr>
<td> ... code ... </td>
</tr>
</table>

table#tablewotholdsstuffandthat td {
    margin: 1em;
}
'
The second example will only select my really stupidly named table, instead of all td's in the entire document! If you have multiple tables of the same type, you could use classes:
<table class="typeoftablewotholdsstuffandthat">
<tr>
<td> ... code ... </td>
</tr>
</table>

table.typeoftablewotholdsstuffandthat td {
    margin: 1em;
}
'

Generally, if you're only going to create one of something then use an id. If you're going to use multiples of the same item, use a class.

This should work in all web browsers and Internet Explorer too.

a Padded Cell our articles site!

He has: 52 posts

Joined: Apr 2006

Thank you, sir. Much appreciated. Smiling

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Isn't border-collapse and border-spacing meant to do the same thing? Unless I'm misreading you here. Border-spacing isn't supported by IE so maybe that's why you used margin instead???

See reference:
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_reference.asp#table

He has: 52 posts

Joined: Apr 2006

Why isn't CSS universal?

*gosh*

Renegade's picture

He has: 3,022 posts

Joined: Oct 2002

CSS more or less is universal. MSIE is just trying to create their own universe Sticking out tongue

JeevesBond's picture

He has: 3,956 posts

Joined: Jun 2002

Renegade wrote: MSIE is just trying to create their own universe Sticking out tongue

Agreed. The CSS support in IE is awful, even IE 7 (the new one who's features were all stolen from Opera/Firefox) is equivalent to Opera 4 in terms of CSS support. Opera 4 was released in 2000 by the way.

This article makes for an interesting read about IE's CSS support, and how you as an author are about to be constrained: http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/operaStuff/acid/

a Padded Cell our articles site!

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

So, you were using the margin instead of border-spacing to get around IE's lack of support, correct?

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