HTML table column widths: combining fixed and variable widths

Question

I've made a table as such:

<table style="width:1000px;">
  <tr>
    <td>aaa</td>
    <td id="space"></td>
    <td class="fixed-width">bbb</td>
    <td class="fixed-width">ccc</td>
  </tr>
</table>

How would I do the CSS so that the b and c columns have a fixed width, the a column only takes as much space as needed, and the space column to expand to fill the rest of the table?

Ed Staub · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-21 21:21:25Z

4

I'm no CSS guru, but it just didn't seem right that there'd be no way to do this. This appears to work in Firefox and IE7. I have not checked other browsers.

The first shrink-to-fit <col> is set (using CSS) to 0 width, so it shrinks to fit the content.

The second space <col> is set (using CSS) to a width larger than will fit in the table.

The width of the last two fixed-width <col>s is not on the <col>. Instead, it's set on the <td> style. This forces the column width.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <title>cols</title>
        <style type="text/css">
            td.fixed-width {
                width: 100px;
                background-color:aqua
            }
            td.min-width {background-color:aqua}
            td.space {border: thick blue solid}
        </style>
    </head>
    <body style="width:1100px; font-family:sans-serif">
        <table style="width:1000px;">
            <col style="width:0"/>
            <col style="width:1000px"/>
            <col span="2" />
            <tr>
                <td class="min-width">aaa</td>
                <td class="space"></td>
                <td class="fixed-width">bbb</td>
                <td class="fixed-width">ccc</td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td class="min-width">aaa asdfasdf asdfsad</td>
                <td class="space"></td>
                <td class="fixed-width">bbb fasdas</td>
                <td class="fixed-width">ccc vdafgf asdf adfa a af</td>
            </tr>
        </table>
    </body>
</html>

edited Jan 21, 2014 at 21:21

answered Nov 21, 2011 at 1:29

Ed Staub

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1 Comment

Ed Staub Over a year ago

@whotemp - you're welcome. I perused the CSS 2.1 spec to see if I could find anything requiring this behavior, and came up empty. What I think this is saying is that, in the event of a shortage of horizontal space in a table, there's a higher priority on giving the cells in a column what they individually claim to require, than it is to provide the <col> width.

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