Top 10 CSS Table Designs -

Top 10 CSS Table Designs (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08

/13/top-10-css-table-designs/)

By Guest Author (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/author/guest-author/)

August 13th, 2008Coding

304 Comments (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/13/top-10-css-table-designs/#comments)

By R. Christie

Tables have got to be one of the most difficult objects to style in the Web, thanks to the cryptic markup, theamount 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 tenmost easily implemented CSS table designs so you can style your tables in a zap!

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that there is a Smashing eBook Series? Book #1 is Professional Web

Design (http://shop.smashingmagazine.com/smashing-ebook-series-1-professional-web-design-intl.html) ,242 pages for just $9,90.]

First things first

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



<table id="...">



<thead>

<tr>

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

...

</tr>

</thead>

Top 10 CSS Table Designs - Smashing Magazine http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/13/top-10-css-table-designs/

1 of 13 18.May.2010 6:01 PM



<tfoot>

<tr>

<td>...</td>

</tr>

</tfoot>



<tbody>

<tr>

<td>...</td>

...

</tr>

...

</tbody>

</table>

You can read more about xhtml table markup in HTML Dog’s Table Section (http://www.htmldog.com

/guides/htmlbeginner/tables/) . I have tested the tables below in Mozilla Firefox 3, IE 6 and 7, Opera 9.x andSafari. 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(http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/images/express-css-table-design/express-css-table-

design.zip) is provided in the end of the article.

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

Tables love space. Set the width of tables carefully, according to the content. If you don’t know theperfect 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.

1.

Cells need some padding. Sure, each table cell relates to each other. But it doesn’t mean that we haveto pull them too close, right? Define some space between the cells, crammed up table cells are so much

harder to read.

2.

Treat tables the way you treat content. Tables are read similarly to the way we read text — exceptit’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 graphicaldecoration. Make sure that the style you apply to it makes the content more readable, not the other wayaround.

3.

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 arow. 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.

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Stephen C. Cox $300 $50 Bob

Josephin Tan $150 - Annie

Joyce Ming $200 $35 Andy

James A. Pentel $175 $25 Annie

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 toomany 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

ProsVery easy to style, good for simple tables

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

Play withColor 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 whitespaceseparators between columns.

Comedy Adventure Action Children


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Scary Movie Indiana Jones The Punisher Wall-E

Epic Movie Star Wars Bad Boys Madagascar

Spartan LOTR Die Hard Finding Nemo

Dr. Dolittle The Mummy 300 A Bug’s Life

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

ProsEasy to style, good for simple tables

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

Play WithColor 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 andthen 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:








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This style is nowadays probably the most used style. The tricky part is actually trying to find the color schemethat 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

ProsEasy to style, flexible for large or small tables

ConsChoosing the perfect color scheme could be tricky

Play withColors 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>

...





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

ProsThe zebra pattern can help people to scan the table

ConsAdding 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 WithContrasting 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>

<col class="vzebra-odd">

<col class="vzebra-even">

<col class="vzebra-odd">

<col class="vzebra-even">

</colgroup>



<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 (http://www.htmldog.com/guides/htmladvanced/tables/) .


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

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

ProsSuitable for all types of tables

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

Play WithContrasting 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:

Company Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

Microsoft 20.3 30.5 23.5 40.3

Google 50.2 40.63 45.23 39.3

Apple 25.4 30.2 33.3 36.7

IBM 20.4 15.6 22.3 29.3

You can also use one-column-emphasis-technique to highlight something important, say the columncontaining 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


7 of 13 18.May.2010 6:01 PM

the columns.

ProsVery effective when used in certain kind of tables

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

Play withColor 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:

Company Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

Microsoft 20.3 30.5 23.5 40.3

Google 50.2 40.63 45.23 39.3

Apple 25.4 30.2 33.3 36.7

IBM 20.4 15.6 22.3 29.3

Simply play with color scheme, borders, padding, backgrounds, and tr:hover effects of the cells (td and

th). Other alternatives are presented below:

Company Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

The above data were fictional and made up, please do not sue me

Microsoft 20.3 30.5 23.5 40.3

Google 50.2 40.63 45.23 39.3

Apple 25.4 30.2 33.3 36.7

IBM 20.4 15.6 22.3 29.3

FAVORITE GREAT NICE BAD

Passion of the Bourne Shoot ‘Em Ali


8 of 13 18.May.2010 6:01 PM

FAVORITE GREAT NICE BAD

Christ Ultimatum Up

The Big Fish The Mummy Apocalypto Monster

Shawshank

Redemption

Cold

Mountain

Indiana

Jones

Dead or

Alive

Greatest Story

Ever ToldI Am Legend Star Wars Saw 3

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

ProsGives a royal, authorative aura to a table

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

Play WithTypography, 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 upPhotoshop 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:

Company Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

The above data were fictional and made up, please do not sue me

Microsoft 20.3 30.5 23.5 40.3

Google 50.2 40.63 45.23 39.3

Apple 25.4 30.2 33.3 36.7

IBM 20.4 15.6 22.3 29.3

ProsGreat if you want untraditional table, probably the only viable option you have if your website uses

rounded corners heavily


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ConsTakes longer to style, requires images

Play WithColor 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 photorelated 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:

1 * html table tbody td

2 {

3

4 /* IE CSS Filter Hack goes here*/

5

6 }

The table would look like this:

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IE 6 users won’t see the transparent background if the hack is not applied

Stephen C. Cox Marketing Make discount offers

Josephin Tan Advertising Give bonuses

Joyce Ming Marketing New designs

James A. Pentel Marketing Better Packaging

Important!Make sure the image is relevant to the table’s contents

ProsVery easy to style, delivers unique look, if used correctly the image can serve as a symbol that gives

outstanding impression on the viewer

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

Play WithBackground images, transparent PNGs, typography, colors, icons

10. Cell Background


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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 widthgradients, and set them as background-image of all cells. You’ll end up with a gradient style table:

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Give background color to the table cells to achieve seamless transition

Stephen C. Cox Marketing Make discount offers 3/10

Josephin Tan Advertising Give bonuses 5/10

Joyce Ming Marketing New designs 8/10

James A. Pentel Marketing Better Packaging 8/10

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






Nation Capital Language Unique

Japan Tokyo Japanese Karate

South Korea Seoul Korean Ginseng

China Beijing Mandarin Kung-Fu

Indonesia Jakarta Indonesian Batik

Important!Make sure the text stands out against the background

ProsEasy to style, not too bland

ConsUses images, patterns and gradients might distract reading

Play With


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5 (Excellent)

4 (Good)

3 (Average)

2 (Not that bad)

1 (Bad)

I don't know

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

Final Words

I know I barely scratched the surface with this article, so grab the source(http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/images/express-css-table-design/express-css-table-

design.zip) and play around. Feel free to post your favourite table designs, especially if it’s something Imissed 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

(mailto:[email protected]) .

Editor’s note

This post is one of the finalists of our guest author contest (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/07/17/write-a-guest-post-and-win-apple-macbook-air/) . Over three weeks selected top-10-lists and discussionarticles will be published. To rate the articles we’ll analyze their popularity, users activity, quality of

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