jQuery slideToggle on a table with thead and tbody elements. No animation.

Question

I have a table with a thead and tbody sections. I have applied a slideToggle on this successfully, but the animation is broken.

When a user clicks on the thead, I want the contents of the tbody to slide up. Currently what happens is the section simply disappears, without any animation.

Here is the table

<table>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <td colspan="3">TABLE HEADING</td>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td class="first" colspan="1">Cell Contents</td>
      <td colspan="1">Cell Contents</td>
      <td colspan="1">Cell Contents</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

And here is the jQuery I am using:

   <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
      $(document).ready(function () {
         $("thead").click(function () {
               $(this).next("tbody").slideToggle("slow");
            }
         )
      });
   </script>

Answer 1

It disappears because <tbody> normally will get no shorter than the tallest td, no matter what you set its height to with CSS.

This is why the natural-height tbody just seems to disappear, while the one with artificial extra-height appears to run until the tr reached its natural height.

You can kludge around this with tbody {display:block;}. See the kludge at jsFiddle.

But, notice the effect that has when a table height is set.

Probably, the best way is to wrap the whole table in a div and slideToggle that, like so:

<table class="AbbyNormal">
    <thead><tr><td colspan="3">TABLE HEADING</td></tr></thead>
</table>
<div class="tableWrap">
    <table class="AbbyNormal">
      <tbody>
        <tr>
            <td class="first" colspan="1">Cell Contents</td>
            <td colspan="1">Cell Contents</td>
            <td colspan="1">Cell Contents</td>
        </tr>
      </tbody>
    </table>
</div>

Just be sure and fix the table widths the same.

See it in action at jsFiddle.