Fixed Table Cell Width

Question

A lot of people still use tables to layout controls, data etc. - one example of this is the popular jqGrid. However, there is some magic happening that I cant seem to fathom (its tables for crying out loud, how much magic could there possibly be?)

How is it possible to set a table's column width and have it obeyed like jqGrid does!? If I try to replicate this, even if I set every <td style='width: 20px'> , as soon as the content of one of those cells is greater than 20px, the cell expands!

Any ideas or insights?

Answer 1

You could try using the <col> tag manage table styling for all rows but you will need to set the table-layout:fixed style on the <table> or the tables css class and set the overflow style for the cells

http://www.w3schools.com/TAGS/tag_col.asp

<table class="fixed">
    <col width="20px" />
    <col width="30px" />
    <col width="40px" />
    <tr>
        <td>text</td>
        <td>text</td>
        <td>text</td>
    </tr>
</table>

and this be your CSS

table.fixed { table-layout:fixed; }
table.fixed td { overflow: hidden; }

Answer 2

Now in HTML5/CSS3 we have better solution for the problem. In my opinion this purely CSS solution is recommended:

 table.fixed {table-layout:fixed; width:90px;}/*Setting the table width is important!*/ table.fixed td {overflow:hidden;}/*Hide text outside the cell.*/ table.fixed td:nth-of-type(1) {width:20px;}/*Setting the width of column 1.*/ table.fixed td:nth-of-type(2) {width:30px;}/*Setting the width of column 2.*/ table.fixed td:nth-of-type(3) {width:40px;}/*Setting the width of column 3.*/

 <table class="fixed"> <tr> <td>Veryverylongtext</td> <td>Actuallythistextismuchlongeeeeeer</td> <td>We should use spaces tooooooooooooo</td> </tr> </table>

You need to set the table's width even in haunter's solution . Otherwise it doesn't work.
Also a new CSS3 feature that vsync suggested is: word-break:break-all; . This will break the words without spaces in them to multiple lines too. Just modify the code like this:

table.fixed { table-layout:fixed; width:90px; word-break:break-all;}

Final result

Answer 3

table td 
{
  table-layout:fixed;
  width:20px;
  overflow:hidden;
  word-wrap:break-word;
}

Answer 4

I had one long table td cell, this forced the table to the edges of the browser and looked ugly. I just wanted that column to be fixed size only and break the words when it reaches the specified width. So this worked well for me:

<td><div style='width: 150px;'>Text to break here</div></td>

You don't need to specify any kind of style to table, tr elements. You may also use overflow:hidden; as suggested by other answers but it causes for the excess text to disappear.

Answer 5

table { 
    table-layout:fixed; width:200px;
}
table tr {
    height: 20px;
}

10x10

Answer 6

for FULLSCREEN width table:

• table width MUST be 100%

• if need N colunms, then THs MUST be N+1

example for 3 columns:

 table.fixed { table-layout: fixed; width: 100%; } table.fixed td { overflow: hidden; }

 <table class="fixed"> <col width=20 /> <col width=20 /> <col width=20 /> <tr> <th>1</th> <th>2</th> <th>3</th> <th>FREE</th> </tr> <tr> <td>text111111111</td> <td>text222222222</td> <td>text3333333</td> </tr> </table>

Answer 7

table
{
  table-layout:fixed;
}
td,th
{
  width:20px; 
  word-wrap:break-word;
}

:first-child ... :nth-child(1) or ...