HTML5 User Saved Column Widths

Question

According to w3.org the width attribute of col tags is obsolete. Their suggestion to "use css," however, doesn't work when you want to programatically change column widths.

Use case: User changes column widths. I save that layout in localstorage. User logs back in, I pull that layout from localstorage and....?

If I were the sort to ignore the standards I'd just go ahead and set the td or col width attribute. What should I do instead?

Note: as is usually the case with stack overflow, the act of writing the question revelaed the answer....I feel a bit dumb.

Answer 1

Instead of using the width attribute, use a style attribute with a value for width.