Top 10 CSS Table Designs

原文:http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/13/top-10-css-table-designs/

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 — thesource 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 (tdand th) and put a 2 pixel border underneath the header.

Employee Salary Bonus Supervisor

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 too many rows. To counter it we simply add 1 pixel border underneath all td elements:

Employee Salary Bonus Supervisor

Stephen C. Cox	$300	$50	Bob
Josephin Tan	$150	-	Annie
Joyce Ming	$200	$35	Andy
James A. Pentel	$175	$25	Annie

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.

Comedy Adventure Action Children

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

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:

Employee Salary Bonus Supervisor

Stephen C. Cox	$300	$50	Bob
Josephin Tan	$150	-	Annie
Joyce Ming	$200	$35	Andy
James A. Pentel	$175	$25	Annie

Comedy Adventure Action Children

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

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>

	...

Employee Salary Bonus Supervisor

Stephen C. Cox	$300	$50	Bob
Josephin Tan	$150	-	Annie
Joyce Ming	$200	$35	Andy
James A. Pentel	$175	$25	Annie

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.

Comedy Adventure Action Children

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

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:

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 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:

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 andth). 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 Christ	Bourne Ultimatum	Shoot ‘Em Up	Ali
The Big Fish	The Mummy	Apocalypto	Monster
Shawshank Redemption	Cold Mountain	Indiana Jones	Dead or Alive
Greatest Story Ever Told	I Am Legend	Star Wars	Saw 3

Important!

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

Pros

Gives a royal, authorative aura to a table

<dt sty