Why can't the browser render this table HTML properly? - html

Question

I'm struggling with TABLE HTML.
I have no idea why this table tag doesn't work properly in browser
<table border="1">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td rowspan="2">1-1</td>
<td rowspan="3">2-1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td rowspan="2">1-2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td rowspan="3">2-2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td rowspan="2">1-3</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
The html above would be rendered like this
However the view I expected to see is like this
As I figured out, If I want to see what I want in browser, I should fix rowspans like this
<table border="1">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td rowspan="1">1-1</td>
<td rowspan="2">2-1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td rowspan="2">1-2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td rowspan="2">2-2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td rowspan="1">1-3</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
But I'm really wondering what's different and why The browser (Chrome) doesn't render the first one properly and does the second one.

Answer 1

According to W3C there is no way to specify float value like 1.5 for rowspan but some tweaks like below may help.
<table border="1">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td rowspan="2">1-1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td rowspan="2">1-2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td rowspan="2">2-1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td rowspan="3">2-2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td rowspan="2">3-1</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Answer 2

Have you tried flexbox yet? It is little bit different approach to solve this.
#main {
width: 100px;
height: 150px;
border: 1px solid #c3c3c3;
align-items: stretch;
display: flex;
flex-flow: column wrap;
}
#main div {
width: 50px;
height: 50px;
line-height: 45px;
text-align: center;
}
#right {
width: 50px;
height: 150px;
}
#right div {
width: 50px;
height: 75px;
line-height: 70px;
text-align: center;
}
<div id="main">
<div style="background-color:lightgrey;" >1-1</div>
<div style="background-color:grey;">1-2</div>
<div style="background-color:lightgrey;">1-3</div>
<div id="right">
<div id="right" style="background-color:lightblue;">2-1</div>
<div id="right" style="background-color:lightgreen;">2-2</div>
</div>
</div>