Set cellpadding and cellspacing in CSS?

Question

Basics

For controlling "cellpadding" in CSS, you can simply use padding on table cells. E.g. for 10px of "cellpadding":

td { 
    padding: 10px;
}

For "cellspacing", you can apply the border-spacing CSS property to your table. E.g. for 10px of "cellspacing":

table { 
    border-spacing: 10px;
    border-collapse: separate;
}

This property will even allow separate horizontal and vertical spacing, something you couldn't do with old-school "cellspacing".

Issues in IE ≤ 7

This will work in almost all popular browsers except for Internet Explorer up through Internet Explorer 7, where you're almost out of luck. I say "almost" because these browsers still support the border-collapse property, which merges the borders of adjoining table cells. If you're trying to eliminate cellspacing (that is, cellspacing="0") then border-collapse:collapse should have the same effect: no space between table cells. This support is buggy, though, as it does not override an existing cellspacing HTML attribute on the table element.

In short: for non-Internet Explorer 5-7 browsers, border-spacing handles you. For Internet Explorer, if your situation is just right (you want 0 cellspacing and your table doesn't have it defined already), you can use border-collapse:collapse.

table { 
    border-spacing: 0;
    border-collapse: collapse;
}

Note: For a great overview of CSS properties that one can apply to tables and for which browsers, see this fantastic Quirksmode page.

Default

The default behavior of the browser is equivalent to:

table {border-collapse: collapse;}
td    {padding: 0px;}

         

Cellpadding

Sets the amount of space between the contents of the cell and the cell wall

table {border-collapse: collapse;}
td    {padding: 6px;}

        

Cellspacing

Controls the space between table cells

table {border-spacing: 2px;}
td    {padding: 0px;}

        

Both

table {border-spacing: 2px;}
td    {padding: 6px;}

        

Both (special)

table {border-spacing: 8px 2px;}
td    {padding: 6px;}

        

Note: If there is border-spacing set, it indicates border-collapse property of the table is separate.

Try it yourself!

Here you can find the old HTML way of achieving this.

table
{
    border-collapse: collapse; /* 'cellspacing' equivalent */
}

table td, table th
{
    padding: 0; /* 'cellpadding' equivalent */
}

Setting margins on table cells doesn't really have any effect as far as I know. The true CSS equivalent for cellspacing is border-spacing - but it doesn't work in Internet Explorer.

You can use border-collapse: collapse to reliably set cell spacing to 0 as mentioned, but for any other value I think the only cross-browser way is to keep using the cellspacing attribute.

This hack works for Internet Explorer 6 and later, Google Chrome, Firefox, and Opera:

table {
    border-collapse: separate;
    border-spacing: 10px; /* cellspacing */
    *border-collapse: expression('separate', cellSpacing = '10px');
}

table td, table th {
    padding: 10px; /* cellpadding */
}

The * declaration is for Internet Explorer 6 and 7, and other browsers will properly ignore it.

expression('separate', cellSpacing = '10px') returns 'separate', but both statements are run, as in JavaScript you can pass more arguments than expected and all of them will be evaluated.