Colspan all columns

Question

How can I specify a td tag should span all columns  when the exact amount of columns in the table will be variable difficult to determine when the HTML is being rendered   w3schools mentions you can use colspan  0   but it doesn t say exactly what browsers support that value  IE 6 is in our list to support     It appears that setting colspan to a value greater than the theoretical amount of columns you may have will work  but it will not work if you have table-layout set to fixed  Are there any disadvantages to using an automatic layout with a large number for colspan  Is there a more correct way of doing this

User · Answer

For IE 6  you ll want to equal colspan to the number of columns in your table  If you have 5 columns  then you ll want  colspan  5    The reason is that IE handles colspans differently  it uses the HTML 3 2 specification      IE implements the HTML 3 2 definition  it sets colspan 0 as colspan 1    The bug is well documented

User · Answer

A CSS solution would be ideal  but I was unable to find one  so here is a JavaScript solution  for a tr element with a given class  maximize it by selecting a full row  counting its td elements and their colSpan attributes  and just setting the widened row with el colSpan   newcolspan    Like so     x000D   x000D  var headertablerows   document getElementsByClassName  max-col-span        forEach call headertablerows  function  headertablerow        var colspan   0         forEach call headertablerow nextElementSibling children  function  child            colspan    child colSpan   parseInt child colSpan  10    1                   headertablerow children 0  colSpan   colspan      x000D  html     font-family  Verdana    tr  gt        padding  1rem    box-shadow  0 0 8px gray inset    x000D     lt table gt       lt tr class  max-col-span  gt         lt td gt 1 - max width        lt  td gt       lt  tr gt       lt tr gt         lt td gt 2 - no colspan        lt  td gt         lt td colspan  2  gt 3 - colspan is 2        lt  td gt       lt  tr gt     lt  table gt  x000D   x000D   x000D   You may need to adjust this if you re using table headers  but this should give a proof-of-concept approach that uses 100  pure JavaScript

User · Answer

Another working but ugly solution   colspan  100   where 100 is a value larger than total columns you need to colspan   According to the W3C  the colspan  0  option is valid only with COLGROUP tag

User · Answer

For IE 6  you ll want to equal colspan to the number of columns in your table  If you have 5 columns  then you ll want  colspan  5    The reason is that IE handles colspans differently  it uses the HTML 3 2 specification      IE implements the HTML 3 2 definition  it sets colspan 0 as colspan 1    The bug is well documented

User · Answer

I have IE 7 0  Firefox 3 0 and Chrome 1 0  The colspan  0  attribute in a TD is NOT spanning across all TDs in any of the above browsers   Maybe not recommended as proper markup practice  but if you give a higher colspan value than the total possible no  of columns in other rows  then the TD would span all the columns    This does NOT work when the table-layout CSS property is set to fixed   Once again  this is not the perfect solution but seems to work in the above mentioned 3 browser versions when the table-layout CSS property is automatic  Hope this helps

User · Answer

As a partial answer  here s a few points about colspan  0   which was mentioned in the question   tl dr version   colspan  0  doesn t work in any browser whatsoever  W3Schools is wrong  as usual   HTML 4 said that colspan  0  should cause a column to span the whole table  but nobody implemented this and it was removed from the spec after HTML 4   Some more detail and evidence    All major browsers treat it as equivalent to colspan  1    Here s a demo showing this  try it on any browser you like    x000D   x000D  td   x000D    border  1px solid black  x000D    x000D   lt table gt  x000D     lt tr gt  x000D       lt td gt ay lt  td gt  x000D       lt td gt bee lt  td gt  x000D       lt td gt see lt  td gt  x000D     lt  tr gt  x000D     lt tr gt  x000D       lt td colspan  0  gt colspan  0  lt  td gt  x000D     lt  tr gt  x000D     lt tr gt  x000D       lt td colspan  1  gt colspan  1  lt  td gt  x000D     lt  tr gt  x000D     lt tr gt  x000D       lt td colspan  3  gt colspan  3  lt  td gt  x000D     lt  tr gt  x000D     lt tr gt  x000D       lt td colspan  1000  gt colspan  1000  lt  td gt  x000D     lt  tr gt  x000D   lt  table gt  x000D   x000D   x000D   The HTML 4 spec  now old and outdated  but current back when this question was asked  did indeed say that colspan  0  should be treated as spanning all columns      The value zero   0   means that the cell spans all columns from the current column to the last column of the column group  COLGROUP  in which the cell is defined    However  most browsers never implemented this  HTML 5 0  made a candidate recommendation back in 2012   the WhatWG HTML living standard  the dominant standard today   and the latest W3 HTML 5 spec all do not contain the wording quoted from HTML 4 above  and unanimously agree that a colspan of 0 is not allowed  with this wording which appears in all three specs      The td and th elements may have a colspan content attribute specified  whose value must be a valid non-negative integer greater than zero       Sources     https   www w3 org TR html50 tabular-data html attributes-common-to-td-and-th-elements https   html spec whatwg org multipage tables html attributes-common-to-td-and-th-elements https   www w3 org TR html53 tabular-data html attributes-common-to-td-and-th-elements  The following claims from the W3Schools page linked to in the question are - at least nowadays - completely false      Only Firefox supports colspan  0   which has a special meaning      It  tells the browser to span the cell to the last column of the column group  colgroup    and      Differences Between HTML 4 01 and HTML5      NONE    If you re not already aware that W3Schools is generally held in contempt by web developers for its frequent inaccuracies  consider this a lesson in why

User · Answer

According to the specification colspan  0  should result in a table width td   However  this is only true if your table has a width  A table may contain rows of different widths  So  the only case that the renderer knows the width of the table if you define a colgroup  Otherwise  result of colspan  0  is indeterminable     http   www w3 org TR REC-html40 struct tables html adef-colspan  I cannot test it on older browsers  but this is part of specification since 4 0

User · Answer

I have IE 7 0  Firefox 3 0 and Chrome 1 0  The colspan  0  attribute in a TD is NOT spanning across all TDs in any of the above browsers   Maybe not recommended as proper markup practice  but if you give a higher colspan value than the total possible no  of columns in other rows  then the TD would span all the columns    This does NOT work when the table-layout CSS property is set to fixed   Once again  this is not the perfect solution but seems to work in the above mentioned 3 browser versions when the table-layout CSS property is automatic  Hope this helps

User · Answer

try using  colSpan  instead of  colspan   IE likes the camelBack version

User · Answer

Just use this  colspan  quot 100  quot   It works on Firefox 3 6  IE 7 and Opera 11   and I guess on others  I couldn t try   Warning  as mentioned in the comments below this is actually the same as colspan  quot 100 quot   Hence  this solution will break for tables with css table-layout  fixed  or more than 100 columns

User · Answer

A CSS solution would be ideal  but I was unable to find one  so here is a JavaScript solution  for a tr element with a given class  maximize it by selecting a full row  counting its td elements and their colSpan attributes  and just setting the widened row with el colSpan   newcolspan    Like so     x000D   x000D  var headertablerows   document getElementsByClassName  max-col-span        forEach call headertablerows  function  headertablerow        var colspan   0         forEach call headertablerow nextElementSibling children  function  child            colspan    child colSpan   parseInt child colSpan  10    1                   headertablerow children 0  colSpan   colspan      x000D  html     font-family  Verdana    tr  gt        padding  1rem    box-shadow  0 0 8px gray inset    x000D     lt table gt       lt tr class  max-col-span  gt         lt td gt 1 - max width        lt  td gt       lt  tr gt       lt tr gt         lt td gt 2 - no colspan        lt  td gt         lt td colspan  2  gt 3 - colspan is 2        lt  td gt       lt  tr gt     lt  table gt  x000D   x000D   x000D   You may need to adjust this if you re using table headers  but this should give a proof-of-concept approach that uses 100  pure JavaScript

User · Answer

Just use this  colspan  quot 100  quot   It works on Firefox 3 6  IE 7 and Opera 11   and I guess on others  I couldn t try   Warning  as mentioned in the comments below this is actually the same as colspan  quot 100 quot   Hence  this solution will break for tables with css table-layout  fixed  or more than 100 columns

User · Answer

If you re using jQuery  or don t mind adding it   this will get the job done better than any of these hacks   function getMaxColCount  table        var maxCol   0        table find  tr   each function i o            var colCount   0            o  find  td not  maxcols  th not  maxcols    each function i oo                var cc   Number   oo  attr  colspan                 if  cc                    colCount    cc                else                   colCount    1                                    if colCount  gt  maxCol    maxCol   colCount                 return maxCol       To ease the implementation  I decorate any td th I need adjusted with a class such as  maxCol  then I can do the following      td maxcols  th maxcols   each function i o         t       o  parents  table   0      o  attr  colspan    getMaxColCount  t          If you find an implementation this won t work for  don t slam the answer  explain in comments and I ll update if it can be covered

User · Answer

I have IE 7 0  Firefox 3 0 and Chrome 1 0  The colspan  0  attribute in a TD is NOT spanning across all TDs in any of the above browsers   Maybe not recommended as proper markup practice  but if you give a higher colspan value than the total possible no  of columns in other rows  then the TD would span all the columns    This does NOT work when the table-layout CSS property is set to fixed   Once again  this is not the perfect solution but seems to work in the above mentioned 3 browser versions when the table-layout CSS property is automatic  Hope this helps

User · Answer

Below is a concise es6 solution  similar to Rainbabba s answer but without the jQuery     x000D   x000D  Array from document querySelectorAll   data-colspan-max     forEach td   gt    x000D      let table   td  x000D      while  table  amp  amp  table nodeName      TABLE   table   table parentNode  x000D      td colSpan   Array from table querySelector  tr   children  reduce  acc  child    gt  acc   child colSpan  0   x000D      x000D  html   x000D    font-family  Verdana  x000D    x000D  tr  gt      x000D    padding  1rem  x000D    box-shadow  0 0 8px gray inset  x000D    x000D   lt table gt  x000D   lt thead gt  x000D     lt tr gt  x000D       lt th gt Header 1 lt  th gt  x000D       lt th gt Header 2 lt  th gt  x000D       lt th gt Header 3 lt  th gt  x000D       lt th gt Header 4 lt  th gt  x000D       lt th gt Header 5 lt  th gt  x000D       lt th gt Header 6 lt  th gt  x000D     lt  tr gt  x000D   lt  thead gt  x000D   lt tbod gt  lt tr gt  x000D     lt td data-colspan-max gt td will be set to full width lt  td gt  x000D   lt  tr gt  lt  tbod gt  x000D   lt  table gt  x000D   x000D   x000D

User · Answer

If you re using jQuery  or don t mind adding it   this will get the job done better than any of these hacks   function getMaxColCount  table        var maxCol   0        table find  tr   each function i o            var colCount   0            o  find  td not  maxcols  th not  maxcols    each function i oo                var cc   Number   oo  attr  colspan                 if  cc                    colCount    cc                else                   colCount    1                                    if colCount  gt  maxCol    maxCol   colCount                 return maxCol       To ease the implementation  I decorate any td th I need adjusted with a class such as  maxCol  then I can do the following      td maxcols  th maxcols   each function i o         t       o  parents  table   0      o  attr  colspan    getMaxColCount  t          If you find an implementation this won t work for  don t slam the answer  explain in comments and I ll update if it can be covered

User · Answer

As a partial answer  here s a few points about colspan  0   which was mentioned in the question   tl dr version   colspan  0  doesn t work in any browser whatsoever  W3Schools is wrong  as usual   HTML 4 said that colspan  0  should cause a column to span the whole table  but nobody implemented this and it was removed from the spec after HTML 4   Some more detail and evidence    All major browsers treat it as equivalent to colspan  1    Here s a demo showing this  try it on any browser you like    x000D   x000D  td   x000D    border  1px solid black  x000D    x000D   lt table gt  x000D     lt tr gt  x000D       lt td gt ay lt  td gt  x000D       lt td gt bee lt  td gt  x000D       lt td gt see lt  td gt  x000D     lt  tr gt  x000D     lt tr gt  x000D       lt td colspan  0  gt colspan  0  lt  td gt  x000D     lt  tr gt  x000D     lt tr gt  x000D       lt td colspan  1  gt colspan  1  lt  td gt  x000D     lt  tr gt  x000D     lt tr gt  x000D       lt td colspan  3  gt colspan  3  lt  td gt  x000D     lt  tr gt  x000D     lt tr gt  x000D       lt td colspan  1000  gt colspan  1000  lt  td gt  x000D     lt  tr gt  x000D   lt  table gt  x000D   x000D   x000D   The HTML 4 spec  now old and outdated  but current back when this question was asked  did indeed say that colspan  0  should be treated as spanning all columns      The value zero   0   means that the cell spans all columns from the current column to the last column of the column group  COLGROUP  in which the cell is defined    However  most browsers never implemented this  HTML 5 0  made a candidate recommendation back in 2012   the WhatWG HTML living standard  the dominant standard today   and the latest W3 HTML 5 spec all do not contain the wording quoted from HTML 4 above  and unanimously agree that a colspan of 0 is not allowed  with this wording which appears in all three specs      The td and th elements may have a colspan content attribute specified  whose value must be a valid non-negative integer greater than zero       Sources     https   www w3 org TR html50 tabular-data html attributes-common-to-td-and-th-elements https   html spec whatwg org multipage tables html attributes-common-to-td-and-th-elements https   www w3 org TR html53 tabular-data html attributes-common-to-td-and-th-elements  The following claims from the W3Schools page linked to in the question are - at least nowadays - completely false      Only Firefox supports colspan  0   which has a special meaning      It  tells the browser to span the cell to the last column of the column group  colgroup    and      Differences Between HTML 4 01 and HTML5      NONE    If you re not already aware that W3Schools is generally held in contempt by web developers for its frequent inaccuracies  consider this a lesson in why

User · Answer

Maybe I m a straight thinker but I m a bit puzzled  don t you know the column number of your table   By the way IE6 doesn t honor the colspan  0   with or without a colgroup defined  I tried also to use thead and th to generate the groups of columns but the browser doesn t recognlise the form colspan  0    I ve tried with Firefox 3 0 on windows and linux and it works only with a strict doctype   You can check a test on several bowser at   http   browsershots org http   hsivonen iki fi test wa10 tables colspan-0 html   I found the test page here http   hsivonen iki fi test wa10 tables colspan-0 html  Edit  Please copy and paste the link  the formatting won t accept the double protocol parts in the link  or I am not so smart to correctly format it

User · Answer

Maybe I m a straight thinker but I m a bit puzzled  don t you know the column number of your table   By the way IE6 doesn t honor the colspan  0   with or without a colgroup defined  I tried also to use thead and th to generate the groups of columns but the browser doesn t recognlise the form colspan  0    I ve tried with Firefox 3 0 on windows and linux and it works only with a strict doctype   You can check a test on several bowser at   http   browsershots org http   hsivonen iki fi test wa10 tables colspan-0 html   I found the test page here http   hsivonen iki fi test wa10 tables colspan-0 html  Edit  Please copy and paste the link  the formatting won t accept the double protocol parts in the link  or I am not so smart to correctly format it

User · Answer

Maybe I m a straight thinker but I m a bit puzzled  don t you know the column number of your table   By the way IE6 doesn t honor the colspan  0   with or without a colgroup defined  I tried also to use thead and th to generate the groups of columns but the browser doesn t recognlise the form colspan  0    I ve tried with Firefox 3 0 on windows and linux and it works only with a strict doctype   You can check a test on several bowser at   http   browsershots org http   hsivonen iki fi test wa10 tables colspan-0 html   I found the test page here http   hsivonen iki fi test wa10 tables colspan-0 html  Edit  Please copy and paste the link  the formatting won t accept the double protocol parts in the link  or I am not so smart to correctly format it

User · Answer

Maybe I m a straight thinker but I m a bit puzzled  don t you know the column number of your table   By the way IE6 doesn t honor the colspan  0   with or without a colgroup defined  I tried also to use thead and th to generate the groups of columns but the browser doesn t recognlise the form colspan  0    I ve tried with Firefox 3 0 on windows and linux and it works only with a strict doctype   You can check a test on several bowser at   http   browsershots org http   hsivonen iki fi test wa10 tables colspan-0 html   I found the test page here http   hsivonen iki fi test wa10 tables colspan-0 html  Edit  Please copy and paste the link  the formatting won t accept the double protocol parts in the link  or I am not so smart to correctly format it

User · Answer

use colspan  quot 100  quot  in table cell and it s working fine   x000D   x000D  colspan  100   x000D   x000D   x000D

User · Answer

If you want to make a  title  cell that spans all columns  as header for your table  you may want to use the caption tag  http   www w3schools com tags tag caption asp   https   developer mozilla org en-US docs Web HTML Element caption  This element is meant for this purpose  It behaves like a div  but doesn t span the entire width of the parent of the table  like a div would do in the same position  don t try this at home     instead  it spans the width of the table  There are some cross-browser issues with borders and such  was acceptable for me   Anyways  you can make it look as a cell that spans all columns  Within  you can make rows by adding div-elements  I m not sure if you can insert it in between tr-elements  but that would be a hack I guess  so not recommended   Another option would be messing around with floating divs  but that is yuck   Do   lt table gt       lt caption style  gimme some style   gt  lt  -- Title of table -- gt  lt  caption gt       lt thead gt  lt  --     -- gt  lt  thead gt       lt tbody gt  lt  --     -- gt  lt  tbody gt   lt  table gt    Don t   lt div gt       lt div style  float  left    extra styling     gt  lt  -- Title of table -- gt  lt  div gt       lt table gt           lt thead gt  lt  --     -- gt  lt  thead gt           lt tbody gt  lt  --     -- gt  lt  tbody gt       lt  table gt       lt div style  clear  both  gt  lt  div gt   lt  div gt

User · Answer

Another working but ugly solution   colspan  100   where 100 is a value larger than total columns you need to colspan   According to the W3C  the colspan  0  option is valid only with COLGROUP tag

User · Answer

Below is a concise es6 solution  similar to Rainbabba s answer but without the jQuery     x000D   x000D  Array from document querySelectorAll   data-colspan-max     forEach td   gt    x000D      let table   td  x000D      while  table  amp  amp  table nodeName      TABLE   table   table parentNode  x000D      td colSpan   Array from table querySelector  tr   children  reduce  acc  child    gt  acc   child colSpan  0   x000D      x000D  html   x000D    font-family  Verdana  x000D    x000D  tr  gt      x000D    padding  1rem  x000D    box-shadow  0 0 8px gray inset  x000D    x000D   lt table gt  x000D   lt thead gt  x000D     lt tr gt  x000D       lt th gt Header 1 lt  th gt  x000D       lt th gt Header 2 lt  th gt  x000D       lt th gt Header 3 lt  th gt  x000D       lt th gt Header 4 lt  th gt  x000D       lt th gt Header 5 lt  th gt  x000D       lt th gt Header 6 lt  th gt  x000D     lt  tr gt  x000D   lt  thead gt  x000D   lt tbod gt  lt tr gt  x000D     lt td data-colspan-max gt td will be set to full width lt  td gt  x000D   lt  tr gt  lt  tbod gt  x000D   lt  table gt  x000D   x000D   x000D

User · Answer

Just want to add my experience and answer to this  Note  It only works when you have a pre-defined table and a tr with ths  but are loading in your rows  for example via AJAX  dynamically   In this case you can count the number of th s there are in your first header row  and use that to span the whole column   This can be needed when you want to relay a message when no results have been found   Something like this in jQuery  where table is your input table   var trs     table  find  tr    var numberColumns   999  if  trs length     1          Assume having one row means that there is a header     var headerColumns     trs  find  th   length      if  headerColumns  gt  0            numberColumns   headerColumns

User · Answer

I have IE 7 0  Firefox 3 0 and Chrome 1 0  The colspan  0  attribute in a TD is NOT spanning across all TDs in any of the above browsers   Maybe not recommended as proper markup practice  but if you give a higher colspan value than the total possible no  of columns in other rows  then the TD would span all the columns    This does NOT work when the table-layout CSS property is set to fixed   Once again  this is not the perfect solution but seems to work in the above mentioned 3 browser versions when the table-layout CSS property is automatic  Hope this helps

User · Answer

If you want to make a  title  cell that spans all columns  as header for your table  you may want to use the caption tag  http   www w3schools com tags tag caption asp   https   developer mozilla org en-US docs Web HTML Element caption  This element is meant for this purpose  It behaves like a div  but doesn t span the entire width of the parent of the table  like a div would do in the same position  don t try this at home     instead  it spans the width of the table  There are some cross-browser issues with borders and such  was acceptable for me   Anyways  you can make it look as a cell that spans all columns  Within  you can make rows by adding div-elements  I m not sure if you can insert it in between tr-elements  but that would be a hack I guess  so not recommended   Another option would be messing around with floating divs  but that is yuck   Do   lt table gt       lt caption style  gimme some style   gt  lt  -- Title of table -- gt  lt  caption gt       lt thead gt  lt  --     -- gt  lt  thead gt       lt tbody gt  lt  --     -- gt  lt  tbody gt   lt  table gt    Don t   lt div gt       lt div style  float  left    extra styling     gt  lt  -- Title of table -- gt  lt  div gt       lt table gt           lt thead gt  lt  --     -- gt  lt  thead gt           lt tbody gt  lt  --     -- gt  lt  tbody gt       lt  table gt       lt div style  clear  both  gt  lt  div gt   lt  div gt

User · Answer

According to the specification colspan  0  should result in a table width td   However  this is only true if your table has a width  A table may contain rows of different widths  So  the only case that the renderer knows the width of the table if you define a colgroup  Otherwise  result of colspan  0  is indeterminable     http   www w3 org TR REC-html40 struct tables html adef-colspan  I cannot test it on older browsers  but this is part of specification since 4 0

User · Answer

Just want to add my experience and answer to this  Note  It only works when you have a pre-defined table and a tr with ths  but are loading in your rows  for example via AJAX  dynamically   In this case you can count the number of th s there are in your first header row  and use that to span the whole column   This can be needed when you want to relay a message when no results have been found   Something like this in jQuery  where table is your input table   var trs     table  find  tr    var numberColumns   999  if  trs length     1          Assume having one row means that there is a header     var headerColumns     trs  find  th   length      if  headerColumns  gt  0            numberColumns   headerColumns

User · Answer

For IE 6  you ll want to equal colspan to the number of columns in your table  If you have 5 columns  then you ll want  colspan  5    The reason is that IE handles colspans differently  it uses the HTML 3 2 specification      IE implements the HTML 3 2 definition  it sets colspan 0 as colspan 1    The bug is well documented

User · Answer

For IE 6  you ll want to equal colspan to the number of columns in your table  If you have 5 columns  then you ll want  colspan  5    The reason is that IE handles colspans differently  it uses the HTML 3 2 specification      IE implements the HTML 3 2 definition  it sets colspan 0 as colspan 1    The bug is well documented

User · Answer

try using  colSpan  instead of  colspan   IE likes the camelBack version

User · Answer

use colspan  quot 100  quot  in table cell and it s working fine   x000D   x000D  colspan  100   x000D   x000D   x000D

[html] Colspan all columns

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