Table padding not working

Question

I have a table that sits within a parent div full of body text and other content. I have the following CSS which does not seem to work:

table {width:100%; padding: 0 50px 0 50px;} 

When I use margins instead of padding, it works—however, with width:100%, using margins scoots the whole thing out of the parent div. I guess I could reduce the width or specify an exact pixel amount, but the rest of the site scales with screen size and I'd like this to work like that, too.

Answer 1

There are some special properties related to tables. The one you are looking for is border-spacing.

table {     width: 100%;     border-collapse: separate;     border-spacing: 0 50px; } 

Example: http://jsfiddle.net/feeela/fPuQ6/

UPDATE: After playing around with my own fiddle I must admit, that I was wrong by telling that "a table doesn't have a padding". The padding on the table is working fine – at least when viewed in Chrome and Opera (12). The following snippet should do want you want too:

table {     width: 100%;     padding: 0 50px 0 50px; } 

See the updated version of the fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/feeela/fPuQ6/3/

Nonetheless I'm still wondering why the padding isn't added to the width as for an element with display: block;.

See also:

• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/border-spacing
• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/border-collapse
• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Getting_started/Tables

Answer 2

This is the reason why;

From MDN, to use padding in tables, you need to have border-collapse: separate; so as to allow for the use of border-spacing because border-spacing is a factor in the calculation of distance between the outer table edge and the edge of the outer cells (see quotes from MDN below). After that you can now assign padding a value. You can also set border-spacing: 0px; to cancel out the addition of border-spacing to the padding.

The border-spacing CSS property sets the distance between the borders of adjacent cells. This property applies only when border-collapse is separate.

The border-spacing value is also used along the outside edge of the table, where the distance between the table's border and the cells in the first/last column or row is the sum of the relevant (horizontal or vertical) border-spacing and the relevant (top, right, bottom, or left) padding on the table.