Using CSS to create table cells of a specific width with no word wrapping

Question

In a project have been involved in I needed to render tables with columns of a specific width with only one HTML line per table row (no wrapping). I need each table cell to have a padding of 1 pixel at the top and bottom and 2 pixels at the left and right. The best way I can come up with that works cross browser is to put a div inside a td inside the table in this way:

<style>
  table.grid { border: none; border-collapse: collapse; }
  table.grid tbody tr td { padding: 1px 2px; }
  table.grid tbody tr td div { overflow: hidden; white-space: nowrap; }
  table.grid tbody tr td.one { width: 100px; }
  table.grid tbody tr td.two { width: 200px; }
</style>
<table class="grid">
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td class="one"><div>One</div></td>
      <td class="two"><div>Two</div></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td class="one"><div>Another One</div></td>
      <td class="two"><div>Another Two</div></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

I would love to be able to eliminate the need to add the extra div. I've spend many hours googling this issue but can't find an alternative.

Is there a way to do what I need without the need to add the extra div? If So, what is it?

Is there a way of getting the desired result without using tables at all?

Answer 1

Unfortunately table elements do not respect overflow, so you will need to apply that to a child element.

edit: I may have spoken too soon, as I can create this effect in FF using max-width and I've discovered this thing which might work for IE. You learn something every day.

edit2: yeah it does work for IE7 at least but there's a serious caveat that you can't have whitespace in the text, they have to be converted to  . I think you should probably stick with the <div> solution for sake of cleanliness and compatability.

Answer 2

Actually, you can.

Normally, the table takes up the space it needs. If you give the table a 100% width, it will take 100% of the with and share that between the cells regarding their contents.

There is no free space in a table: at some point, there must be a cell that takes up the remaining space once the size of the others have been set.

To set a width of a cell, you would need to give it a width and a max-width to the same size. For a table with N columns, you can do that to N-1 columns, and the last column will take the remaining space.

If you do that to N-2 columns, the two columns that do not have fixed with will share the remaining space.

Having this all, you can add white-space:no-wrap and/or text-overflow:ellipsis if you wish.

Here is an image example (my RSS reader) : https://i.stack.imgur.com/bPpKP.png

And a live example: https://codepen.io/lehollandaisvolant/pen/REVNLy?editors=1100

You can see that it’s actually amazingly powerfull. In the codepen, you can see:

• some cells are fixed width
• some cells fit to the text it contains
• some cells fit the the container

And you can decide the behaviour of each cell (as long as there is one cell that fits to the container)

Answer 3

You should not need to nest a div within each table cell. The following should achieve the same affect.

<style>
  table.grid { border-collapse: collapse; }
  table.grid tbody tr td { overflow: hidden; white-space: nowrap; padding: 1px 2px; }
  table.grid tbody tr td.one { width: 100px; }
  table.grid tbody tr td.two { width: 200px; }
</style>
<table class="grid">
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td class="one"><span>One</span></td>
      <td class="two"><span>Two</span></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td class="one"><span>Another One</span></td>
      <td class="two"><span>Another Two</span></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

Answer 4

You can also simply replace table by div.

Then you have to define the column width in CSS (which may be tricky to get to work across all browsers).

Example: Your code would then look like this:

<div class="mainBoxOfTable">
    <div class="Line">
      <div class="ColumnOne">One</div>
      <div class="ColumnTwo">Two</div>
    </div>
    <div class="Line">
      <div class="ColumnOne">another One</div>
      <div class="ColumnTwo">another Two</div>
    </div>
 </div>