DataTables fixed headers misaligned with columns in wide tables

Question

Problem

When using the sScrollX, sScrollXInner and/or sScrollY to achieve a fixed header table with its inner content scrolling, the headers of the table go out of alignment with the rest of the body in Chrome and IE. Firefox, on the other hand, displays them perfectly.

Using the version 1.9.4, as far as I can tell, this issue only occurs when there is a lot of data with fluctuating widths, and with words that are very long/unwrappable combined in the same columns as small ones. Also, the table in question needs to be fairly wide.

All these factors are demonstrated in this fiddle:

Output

Chrome:

IE:

Firefox

Suggested Solutions

These solutions have been suggested before but have had no effect on my implementation. Owing to some of these suggestions, I setup a clean plain vanilla demo as I wanted to ensure that no other code was contributing to this effect.

• turn-off/remove all my css
• setTimeout( function () { oTable.fnAdjustColumnSizing(); }, 10 );
• calling oTable.fnFilter( "x",0 ) and oTable.fnFilter( "",0 ) in that order
• "sScrollXInner": "100%"
• get rid of all widths

The only solution that I found to the misaligned headers was taking out sScrollX and sScrollY, but this can't be counted as a solution as you lose the fixed header/inner content scrolling functionality. So sadly it's a temporary hack, not a fix!

Note

To edit/play with the latest fiddle.

I have tried various combinations which can be observed in the revision history of the fiddle by using the link http://jsfiddle.net/pratik136/etL73/#REV# where 1 <= #REV# <= 12

History

StackO
This question has been asked before: jQuery Datatables Header Misaligned With Vertical Scrolling
but the vital difference is that the OP of that question mentioned that they were able to fix the issue if all CSS was removed, which is untrue in my case, and I have tried a few permutations, thus thought the question worthy of a repost.

External
This issue has also been flagged on the DataTables forum:

• http://datatables.net/forums/discussion/7395/sscrolly-and-sscrollx-broken/p1
• http://datatables.net/forums/discussion/7778/vertical-scrolling-messes-up-column-header-alignment#Item_1
• http://datatables.net/forums/discussion/3835/width-columns-problem-in-chrome-safari/p1
• My bug report: http://datatables.net/forums/discussion/12491/datatables-header-alignment-issue-refresh#Item_1

This issue has driven me nuts! Please contribute your thoughts!

Answer 1

EDIT: See the latest Fiddle with "fixed header":

---

The Fiddle.

One of the solutions is to implement scrolling yourself instead of letting DataTables plugin do it for you.

I've taken your example and commented out sScrollX option. When this option is not present DataTables plugin will simply put your table as is into a container div. This table will stretch out of the screen, therefore, to fix that we can put it into a div with required width and an overflow property set - this is exactly what the last jQuery statement does - it wraps existing table into a 300px wide div. You probably will not need to set the width on the wrapping div at all (300px in this example), I have it here so that clipping effect is easily visible. And be nice, don't forget to replace that inline style with a class.

$(document).ready(function() { var stdTable1 = $(".standard-grid1").dataTable({     "iDisplayLength": -1,     "bPaginate": true,     "iCookieDuration": 60,     "bStateSave": false,     "bAutoWidth": false,     //true     "bScrollAutoCss": true,     "bProcessing": true,     "bRetrieve": true,     "bJQueryUI": true,     //"sDom": 't',     "sDom": '<"H"CTrf>t<"F"lip>',     "aLengthMenu": [[25, 50, 100, -1], [25, 50, 100, "All"]],     //"sScrollY": "500px",     //"sScrollX": "100%",     "sScrollXInner": "110%",     "fnInitComplete": function() {         this.css("visibility", "visible");     } });  var tableId = 'PeopleIndexTable'; $('<div style="width: 300px; overflow: auto"></div>').append($('#' + tableId)).insertAfter($('#' + tableId + '_wrapper div').first())}); 

Answer 2

The following is a way to achieve a fixed header table, I don't know if it will be enough for your purpose. Changes are:

1. use "bScrollCollapse" instead of "sScrollXInner"
2. don't use fieldset to wrap table
3. add a "div.box" css class

It seems fully working on my local machine, but it's not fully working using Fiddle. It seems that Fiddle adds a css file (normalize.css) that in some way broke the plugin css (quite sure I can make fully working also in Fiddle adding some css clear rules, but not have time to investigate further now)

My working code snippet is below. Hope this can help.

<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head>   <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">    <script type='text/javascript' src='http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.8.2.js'></script>   <script type='text/javascript' src="http://datatables.net/release-datatables/media/js/jquery.dataTables.min.js"></script>   <style type='text/css'>        div.box {        height: 100px;        padding: 10px;        overflow: auto;        border: 1px solid #8080FF;        background-color: #E5E5FF;    }    .standard-grid1, .standard-grid1 td, .standard-grid1 th {     border: solid black thin;    } </style>  <script type='text/javascript'>  $(window).load(function(){ $(document).ready(function() {     var stdTable1 = $(".standard-grid1").dataTable({         "iDisplayLength": -1,         "bPaginate": true,         "iCookieDuration": 60,         "bStateSave": false,         "bAutoWidth": false,         //true         "bScrollAutoCss": true,         "bProcessing": true,         "bRetrieve": true,         "bJQueryUI": true,         "sDom": '<"H"CTrf>t<"F"lip>',         "aLengthMenu": [[25, 50, 100, -1], [25, 50, 100, "All"]],         "sScrollX": "100%",         //"sScrollXInner": "110%",         "bScrollCollapse": true,         "fnInitComplete": function() {             this.css("visibility", "visible");         }     }); }); });  </script>   </head> <body> <div>     <table class="standard-grid1 full-width content-scrollable" id="PeopleIndexTable">         <thead>           <!-- put your table header HTML here -->        </thead>        <tbody>           <!-- put your table body HTML here -->         </tbody>     </table> </div> </body> </html>