CSS horizontal table cell spacing: how?
Solution 1
How about giving each table cell a transparent border? I am pretty sure this will do it for you...
table td {
border:solid 5x transparent;
}
And you can only apply it horizontally like so...
table td {
border-left:solid 10px transparent;
}
table td:first-child {
border-left:0;
}
Here's a complete working demo of what I believe you are trying to accomplish...
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Layout</title>
<style type="text/css">
table {
border: 1px solid black;
}
table td {
background: yellow;
border-left:solid 10px transparent;
}
table td:first-child {
border-left:0;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<table>
<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>2</td>
<td>3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>4</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>6</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>7</td>
<td>8</td>
<td>9</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
I do not believe IE6 supports the CSS :first-child, so here is a workaround for that...
<!–-[if IE 6]>
<style type="text/css">
table td {
border-left: expression(this.previousSibling == null ? '0' : 'solid 5px transparent');
}
</style>
<![endif]-->
Solution 2
It is may be what are you loking for:
You can use two values: the first is the horizontal cellspacing, the second the vertical one.
<table style="border-spacing: 40px 10px;">
Solution 3
try using col
s
example
<table>
<col style="padding-right:20px;" />
<col style="padding-right:30px;" />
<col />
<tr>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
</table>
cols also support classes :)
hope this helps
Darko
EDIT: To clarify a col
is an element declared at the top of the table to influence entire columns. The first col element will influence the first column, the second col = second column and so on. They can be grouped in colgroups if you wish to assign the same style to more than one column.
EDIT2: After some more research it turns out that the only reliable styles you can set on a col
element are:
- border
- background
- width
- visibility
No margin or padding. Bugger! Would setting the width of the columns explicitly solve your problem?
Solution 4
You could also consider using a series of fixed width divs floated left with margins. This might give you a bit more control over the element styling.
.row div {
margin-right: 10px;
float: left;
width: 50px;
}
<div class="row">
<div>Cell One</div>
<div>Cell Two</div>
<div>Cell Three</div>
</div>
Solution 5
Josh's answer doesn't work if you already have borders around your cells, like me.
I solved the problem by shifting the whole table slightly to the left, using "position: relative; left: -10px". I combined this with cellspacing on the table.
<div id='sandbox'>
<table cellspacing='10'>
<tr>
<td class='smoothBox'>
...
</td>
<td class='smoothBox'>
...
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
and the css:
#sandbox {
float: left;
position: relative; /* move the whole sandbox */
left: -11px; /* slightly to the left */
width: 950px;
margin-top: 0px;
padding: 1px;
text-align: left;
}
#sandbox table {
float: left;
width: 100%;
}
#sandbox td {
width: 300px;
vertical-align: top;
}
This is what works for me, I hope it may help you too.
Comments
-
Jordie over 4 years
Hopefully this is an easy one but I have not found a solution. I want to put space between columns on a table.
Example
| Cell |<- space ->| Cell |<- space ->| Cell |
An important point is that I do not want space on the edges. There is a border-spacing property but it is not supported in IE (6 or 7) so that is no good. It also puts space at the edges.
The best I have come up with is to put padded-right: 10px on my table cells and add a class to the last one to remove the padding. This is less than ideal because the extra space is part of the cell not outside it. I guess you could do the same thing with a transparent border?
I also tried using jQuery:
$(function() { $("table > tbody > tr:not(:last-child").addClass("right-padding"); });
but even on tables that are only ~100 rows in size this was taking 200-400ms in some cases, which is too slow.
Any help appreciated.
Thanks
To those suggesting columns they do not work. Try this:
<html> <head> <title>Layout</title> <style type="text/css"> table { border: 1px solid black; } td { background: yellow; } </style> </head> <body> <table> <col style="padding-right: 30px;"> <col style="padding-right: 30px;"> <col> <tr> <td>1</td> <td>2</td> <td>3</td> </tr> <tr> <td>4</td> <td>5</td> <td>6</td> </tr> <tr> <td>7</td> <td>8</td> <td>9</td> </tr> </table> </body> </html>