W3C CSS2 Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 - instructional media + ...

selects the border styles at every cell edge.
’background’
The background properties set the background for cells in the column, but
only if both the cell and row have transparent backgrounds. See "Table
layers and transparency." [p. 254]
’width’
The ’width’ property gives the minimum width for the column.
’visibility’
If the ’visibility’ of a column is set to ’collapse’, none of the cells in the
column are rendered, and cells that span into other columns are clipped. In
addition, the width of the table is diminished by the width the column would
have taken up. See "Dynamic effects" [p. 261] below. Other values for ’visibility’
have no effect.
Example(s):
Here are some examples of style rules that set properties on columns. The first
two rules together implement the "rules" attribute of HTML 4.0 with a value of
"cols". The third rule makes the "totals" column blue, the final two rules shows
how to make a column a fixed size, by using the fixed layout algorithm [p. 257] .
COL { border-style: none solid }
TABLE { border-style: hidden }
COL.totals { background: blue }
TABLE { table-layout: fixed }
COL.totals { width: 5em }
17.4 Tables in the visual formatting model
In terms of the visual formatting model [p. 95] , a table may behave like a
block-level [p. 97] or replaced inline-level [p. 98] element. Tables have content,
padding, borders, and margins.
In both cases, the table element generates an anonymous [p. 98] box that
contains the table box itself and the caption’s box (if present). The table and
caption boxes retain their own content, padding, margin, and border areas, and
the dimensions of the rectangular anonymous box are the smallest required to
contain both. Vertical margins collapse where the table box and caption box
touch. Any repositioning of the table must move the entire anonymous box, not
just the table box, so that the caption follows the table.
250