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By R. Christie

Tables have got to be one of the most difficult objects to style in the Web, thanks to the cryptic markup, the amount of detail we have to take care of, and lack of browser compatibility. A lot of time could be wasted on a single table although it’s just a simple one. This is where this article comes in handy. It will show you ten most easily implemented CSS table designs so you can style your tables in a zap!

First things first

We start with a valid xhtml 1.0 strict markup. Here is an example of a valid table markup:

<!-- Table markup-->

<table id="...">

	<!-- Table header -->

		<thead>
			<tr>
				<th scope="col" id="...">...</th>
				...
			</tr>
		</thead>

	<!-- Table footer -->

		<tfoot>
	        <tr>
	              <td>...</td>
	        </tr>
		</tfoot>

	<!-- Table body -->

		<tbody>
			<tr>
				<td>...</td>
				...
			</tr>
			...
		</tbody>

</table>

You can read more about xhtml table markup in HTML Dog’s Table Section. I have tested the tables below in Mozilla Firefox 3, IE 6 and 7, Opera 9.x and Safari. Also note that I apply a light blue color scheme to all of these tables to give the article a consistent look. You can modify the color scheme to match your site — the source package is provided in the end of the article.

Before we start, let’s review the general rule of thumb for styling of tables:

1. Tables love space. Set the width of tables carefully, according to the content. If you don’t know the perfect width, simply set the width of the table to 100%. Tables look nicer when they have “overwidth”, and when it comes to tables too much width is definitely better than too little width.
2. Cells need some padding. Sure, each table cell relates to each other. But it doesn’t mean that we have to pull them too close, right? Define some space between the cells, crammed up table cells are so much harder to read.
3. Treat tables the way you treat content. Tables are read similarly to the way we read text — except it’s harder and it takes more time to read a table. So be careful with the amount of contrast you are giving to your table. Use soft colors — it’s easier for the eyes. Don’t treat your table like it’s a graphical decoration. Make sure that the style you apply to it makes the content more readable, not the other way around.

Now that we are all set up let’s get going, shall we?

1. Horizontal Minimalist

Horizontal tables are tables that are read rather horizontally than vertically. Each entity is represented by a row. You can style these types of tables with minimalist style. Simply set enough padding to the cells (td and th) and put a 2 pixel border underneath the header.

Because horizontal tables are supposed to be scanned horizontally, clearing the border of the table increases the efficiency of the table. The lack of border, however, makes this table design hard to read if it has too many rows. To counter it we simply add 1 pixel border underneath all td elements:

The tr:hover rules are very useful to aid people reading a minimally designed tables. When the mouse cursor hovers over a cell, the rest of the cells in the same row highlights immediately, making it easier to track things if your tables have multiple columns.

Important!

Carefully finetune the typography and the padding between the cells

Pros

Very easy to style, good for simple tables

Cons

tr:hover rules don’t work in IE 6, table can be confusing if it has too many columns

Play with

Color scheme, typography, tr:hover effects

2. Vertical Minimalist

Although rarely used, vertically oriented tables are useful for categorizing or comparing descriptions of objects, with each entity represented by a column. We can style it in minimalistic style by adding whitespace separators between columns.

Add large border-left and border-right with the same color as background. You can use transparent borders if you want, but IE 6 screws it all up. Since this table is supposed to be read from top to bottom (vertically), adding tr:hover does not help and instead makes it harder to read the data. There is perhaps a Javascript-based solution which enables you to highlight the whole column when a mouseover event occurs, but that’s beyond the scope of this article.

Important!

Carefully finetune the typography and the padding between the cells, do not add tr:hover effect

Pros

Easy to style, good for simple tables

Cons

Can not be used if background is not a solid block of color, suitable only for some tables

Play With

Color scheme and typography

3. Box

The most dependable of all styles, the box style works for all kinds of tables. Pick a good color scheme and then distribute background-color to all the cells. Don’t forget to accentuate the differences of each cell by defining border as a separator. An example of a box style table is the following table:

This style is nowadays probably the most used style. The tricky part is actually trying to find the color scheme that matches with your site. If your site is heavy on graphics, it will be pretty hard to use this style.

Important!

Choose a color scheme that matches with your site

Pros

Easy to style, flexible for large or small tables

Cons

Choosing the perfect color scheme could be tricky

Play with

Colors and borders, use dashed or dotted to achieve cute effects, typography, icons

4. Horizontal Zebra

Zebra-tables are pretty attractive and usable. The alternating background color can serve as a visual cue for people when scanning the table. To style a table as zebra, simply put a class="odd" to every odd ordered tr tag and define a style for it (e.g. using if ($count % 2) then even class else odd class in PHP).

	...

		<tr class="odd">
		   <td>...</td>
		   ...
		</tr>

		<tr>
		   <td>...</td>
		   ...
		</tr>

	...

Important!

Do not put too much contrast on the zebra colors, you can blind your users

Pros

The zebra pattern can help people to scan the table

Cons

Adding class="odd" manually can be very tedious for large tables, many content management systems do not provide even/odd features on a table loop, hence picking the color scheme may be tricky

Play With

Contrasting color, borders, typography, icons

5. Vertical Zebra Style

Vertical zebra is easier to style than the horizontal one, as we can make use of colgroup and col elements to distribute column classes. However, the markup becomes a little bit heavier:

<table>

		<!-- Colgroup -->
	   <colgroup>
	      <col class="vzebra-odd">
	      <col class="vzebra-even">
	      <col class="vzebra-odd">
	      <col class="vzebra-even">
	   </colgroup>

		<!-- Table header -->
	   <thead>
	      <tr>
	         <th scope="col" id="vzebra-comedy">Employee</th>
	         ...
	      </tr>
	   </thead>

	   ...
</table>

The colgroup element actually applies a style or class to the table, columnwise. Instead of tediously applying class for the first td or th element, we can use a more convenient colgroup-tag. For more information about colgroup visit this page.

Although perhaps more suitable for vertically-oriented table, this zebra-style can also be used for any other kind of tables.

Important!

Do not put too much contrast on the zebra colors, you can blind your viewer

Pros

Suitable for all types of tables

Cons

Choosing the color scheme could be tricky, need to add colgroup elements

Play With

Contrasting color, borders, colgroup and col, icons and typography

6. One Column Emphasis

In some tables, some particular column may have a higher weight than the other columns. If that’s the case, you can use colgroup and col to make that particular column stand out. In the example below, the first column serves as the starting point to read, so it is emphasized, just like we emphasize the first letter of the paragraph as drop caps:

You can also use one-column-emphasis-technique to highlight something important, say the column containing totals of an accounting table, or in a comparison table — for computer specification perhaps, the winning entity (column).

Important!

Be careful, don’t overdo the emphasis or the column will jump out, distracting the effort to read the rest of the columns.

Pros

Very effective when used in certain kind of tables

Cons

The necessary tr:hover effect does not work in IE, suitable for certain types of tables only

Play with

Color scheme, typography, icons and tr:hover effects

7. Newspaper

To achieve the so-called newspaper effect, apply border to table element and play with the cells inside. A quick, minimalistic newspaper style can look like this:

Simply play with color scheme, borders, padding, backgrounds, and tr:hover effects of the cells (td and th). Other alternatives are presented below:

Important!

Be careful with border-collapse, do not lose the signature border around the table!

Pros

Gives a royal, authorative aura to a table

Cons

Unsuitable for large tables (it loses it’s charm on large tables)

Play With

Typography, color scheme, background, border, padding, and tr:hover effects

8. Rounded Corner

Rounded corners are slick and modern, and it’s easy to apply it to a table, although you need to fire up Photoshop for this. Create images for all four corners of your table. Theoretically, we can make use of the nesting tr and td-elements to place the left and right corners of the table without adding additional markup. Unfortunately, IE 6 goes berserk and the table appears ugly, so the most stable way to do this is to put ID or class to all four corner cells of the table. Please consider the example below:

Pros

Great if you want untraditional table, probably the only viable option you have if your website uses rounded corners heavily

Cons

Takes longer to style, requires images

Play With

Color scheme, corner variations, typography, tr:hover effects, icons

9. Table Background

If you are looking for a quick and unique way to style your table, simply pick an attractive image or photo related to the subject of your table and set it to be the background-image of the table. You can add 50% grey png-image as background-image of the cells to improve readability, and that means that you need a CSS-hack to make it work in IE 6:

pre class=”brush: css;”

* html table tbody td
{

/* IE CSS Filter Hack goes here*/

}

The table would look like this:

Important!

Make sure the image is relevant to the table's contents

Pros

Very easy to style, delivers unique look, if used correctly the image can serve as a symbol that gives outstanding impression on the viewer

Cons

Needs hack to get the background work in IE 6, needs images

Play With

Background images, transparent PNGs, typography, colors, icons

10. Cell Background

You can apply background-image to the cells and achieve a consistent look. Say you have at least half an hour to spare and you want something that's not too bland. Start your Photoshop and make 1 pixel width gradients, and set them as background-image of all cells. You'll end up with a gradient style table:

Similarly, pick a pattern and set it as background-image and you'll end up with a pattern-styled-table:

Important!

Make sure the text stands out against the background

Pros

Easy to style, not too bland

Cons

Uses images, patterns and gradients might distract reading

Play With

Color scheme, patterns, typography, borders, backgrounds, gradients, icons

Final Words

I know I barely scratched the surface with this article, so grab the source and play around. Feel free to post your favourite table designs, especially if it's something I missed out. Over to you.

About the author

R.Christie is studying information systems at college. He viciously juggles activities from college, web design, programming, church, to sport activities. You can say hello to him via e-mail.

Editor's note

This post is one of the finalists of our guest author contest. Over three weeks selected top-10-lists and discussion articles will be published. To rate the articles we'll analyze their popularity, users activity, quality of backlinks, traffic and further data.