table formatting without css - html

I have a table defined as
<table border="1" width="200px" height="auto">
<tr>
<td></td>
</tr>
</table>
Is there a way that I can align the table at the center of the page, apply background color to page without using css for any of these operations?

I assume you are doing something horrible like HTML email:
<center><table bgcolor="#ff00ff"></table></center>

<center>
<table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="200" align="center">
<tr>
<td background="http://www.yourdomain.com/email/images/background.jpg" align="left">
<!-- Stuff -->
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</center>
http://www.email-standards.org/
http://mailchimp.com/resources/guides/email-marketing-field-guide/
http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/tutorials/ultimate-guide-html-emails/
The background attribute was never valid on table or td. Pretty sure the only thing the HTML 4 specification had background on was body. But I vaguely recall that it worked elsewhere and I think table cells was elsewhere--whether it works in Outlook you'll just have to test. bgcolor was valid all of those places...and is likely to work.

Related

Table cell uses a lot more width then it needs

I'm designing a newsletter template and I'm having an issue with a table that contains graphics and text in the same row. For some reason, the graphic pushes the text all the way to the right. I'd like the text to be "connected"/left aligned with the icon as the template uses up to 3 icon sets (icon + text).
https://jsfiddle.net/o1dLoxa8/
The code doesn't look pretty right now as I've been trying everything just to make it work. Anyone able to help me out?
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="salesListText">
<tr>
<td align="left" valign="middle" class="saleslistIcon">
<img src="http://dyreparken-nyhetsbrev.s3.amazonaws.com/ikon/billetterL.png" alt="" height="28" width="28" />
</td>
<td align="left" valign="middle" class="saleslistIconText">
Billetter
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="baseline" colspan="3">
<h2>Kaptein Sabeltann - Kun forestillingen</h2>
(Kan kombineres med parkbilletter og/eller overnatting)
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="baseline">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="salesListSpec">
<tr>
<td valign="baseline" colspan="3">
<h4>Pakken inneholder:</h4>
- Billetter til forestillingen
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" valign="top" class="saleslistPrice" colspan="3">
<h2 style="color:#E3178A;"><span>Pris fra </span>240,-</h2>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
.saleslistIcon{padding-right:10px;}
.saleslistIconText{color:#B4B4B4; font-size:12px; padding-right:8px;}
.salesListText{width:100%;}
.salesListSpec{padding-top:10px; line-height:170%; display:block;}
h2 span{font-size:16px; font-weight:normal; color:#444444;}
You've got a table that has three columns; but you're jamming the image (small) and body text (large) in the same column (0). That will push columns 2, and 3 way to the right.
Try putting border="1" onto your table definition to see what I mean.
I'd suggest you use the outer table to create your rows and have only a single TD. Inside each TD then embed secondary tables for complicated layout. I'm assuming an email newsletter, so keep your CSS to a minimum or put it inline rather than a separate style section. A lot of email providers don't play nicely with CSS.
Hope that helps.
From the look of your fiddle, this is to be expected. You're using a table layout, meaning that all cells in the same column will have the same width and all cells in the same row will have the same height. My immediate recommendation is to ditch the table layout and use semantic elements.
If you're hellbent on using a table layout, you need to be aware of your colspan and rowspan attributes on your cells and how they affect your layout.
Put display:inline inside <tr> where you have the icon + text.
http://jsfiddle.net/zg0zrx3v/

How do I put text in the middle of these tables?

I'm new to html/css, and I'm coding a website with a rather intricate layout.
Because I'm a musician, I want to have a personal website, but I have a problem. I have these two tables, one on the left and one on the right, and I want text in the middle of the tables, but it doesn't go there and instead, goes on top of the tables. Is there any way I can make it so that it can do this?
Here's my code:
<html>
<table width="400" height="675" border="5" style="float: left" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td>
<div>
(embedded gadget)
</div>
</td>
</tr>
<h2 align="center">FAQ</h2>
<table width="400" height="675" border="5" style="float: right;" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td>
<div>
(information on the album here)
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</html>
First of all I recommend using bootstrap-3 as it is very well documented and easy to make good looking sites.
That being said I am not great at HTML or CSS either. Also you are not closing your table with . You could try doing this:
<table width="100%">
<tr>
<td>
<table width="400" height="675" border="5"cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td>
<div>
(embedded gadget)
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
<td>
<table width="400" height="675" border="5"cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td>
<div>
(information on the album here)
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
<table>
You have a HTML error where you haven't closed your table tags.
As a beginner in HTML you need some tools to check what you've created is valid. Try running your page through a HTML validator which will tell you about errors like that And/or use View Source in Firefox which highlights errors like that in red.

Outlook HTML email - vertical gaps in image slices

So, typical question. I have searched a boatload here. Tried everything suggested. Nutin'
So Maybe to ask the question fresh.
I am having some verical gaps in Outlook 2013 (and 2007 too i think) between my image slices. (Also my text is extending further than it is set as)
Knowing that display:block doesn't really work for Outlook. I've tried wrapping in spans and giving the span a display:block
I'm at a loss. I'm hoping someone can answer this one easily. Grrrrr!!!! Outlook! Why must you be so popular?
http://pastebin.com/ESfEmWer
http://tinypic.com/r/2gtdhu1/6
Don't go for
display: [anything]
if you wish to include Outlook 2007. See http://www.xequte.com/support/maillistking/css_in_emails.html for reference of which CSS styles you can use and which you better don't.
Don't use any whitespaces trailing
<td>
and don't use any whitespaces preceding
</td>
And you should also avoid
<style>...</style>
as this will most likely will be striped away completely. Always go for inline-styles. And I know that this is not part of a real answer, but just as a hint: If you are doing HTML newsletters make them as if you were doing them for Internet Explorer 4. E-Mail clients like Outlook use the most ridiculous CSS-renderer you can imagine. Even Internet Explorer 5 is more sophisticated in rendering CSS then modern Outlooks.
Oh, and by the way: If there is a chance that the recipients of your newsletter might read them online in hotmail, gmx or gmail then you should check them, too. You will stand in awe and wonder how those online clients handle your code and what they inject.
You have a ton of whitespace causing the gap:
<a href="mms://a1783.v167326.c16732.g.vm.akamaistream.net/7/1783/16732/0/QPS.Onstreammedia.com/origin/jjready2/%5bInbox%5d/Talent%20Management/CDF%201-18_WMV.wmv">
<img style="display:block" src="http://emaniocreative.com/eblasts/3_26_2013/Message-from-Dominic-&-Louise.jpg" width="360" height="257" border="0" alt="Message from Dominic & Louise - Video"></a>
Try taking the whitespace out.. also display:block doesn't work like display:inline-block (the later you probably want instead) You cannot add formatting such as margin or padding to SPAN. I would keep what you have as IMG and DIV elements, however if you are using a TABLE you may want the border-collapse:collapse; property set.
Also to note, if you are using display:inline-block you will want to take out ALL whitespace between your elements:
<tr>...</tr><tr>...</tr>
Instead of what you have currently:
<tr>
...
</tr>
<tr>
...
</tr>
You have way too many colspans, which could cause problems. You should be nesting your tables instead.
I've created hundreds of emails and never had any issues with whitespace caused by line-returns in email code. (Outlook 2007 is the first thing I check my emails in)
It is always good practice to use display:block; and also keep images in their own <td> by themselves.
Try something like this instead:
<html>
<head>
<title>Ambassador Newsletter</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<style>img {display:block}</style>
</head>
<!--REPLACE the following text with the path to the images on your server http://emaniocreative.com/eblasts/3_26_2013/ -->
<body style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: #FFFFFF;" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><table bgcolor="#ebebeb" width="100%" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td><table width="600" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td valign="top" style="padding-top:30px; padding-bottom:30px;">
<table id="Table_01" width="650" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" bgcolor="#ffffff" style="border-collapse: collapse;">
<tr>
<td>
<!-- NEST A TABLE INSTEAD-->
<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" bgcolor="#770000">
<tr>
<td style="padding:20px;">
header
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- /NEST-->
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<!-- NEST A TABLE INSTEAD-->
<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td style="padding:20px;">
Body section 1
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding:20px;">
Body section 2
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- /NEST-->
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td></tr></table></td></tr></table></body></html>
In my example I used padding instead of cells for spacing.
You never need a blank spacer image. Use a in an empty cell instead if you prefer not to use padding:
<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" bgcolor="#770000">
<tr>
<td height="20" colspan="3">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="20">
</td>
<td width="610">
header
</td>
<td width="20">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td height="20" colspan="3">
</td>
</tr>
</table>
On a side note, there is an unavoidable issue with vertical separation when forwarding from Outlook to Gmail for example, (courtesy of mso.normal p tags added) but for the initial recipient there are no problems.

Easiest way to align text in a table cell

I know very little html and pretty much no css. I would like to know the easiest way for me to change my left aligned text to center aligned within the cells. Someone on stackoverflow helped me to figure out how to center a table on my wordpress page with the following code:
<div style="text-align: center;">
<table style="margin: 0px auto;" border="0">
<table border="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>ddd</td>
<td>ddd</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
I now need to figure out how to center the text within the cells. I have tried using align="center" beside the td. This showed the text centered in the wordpress admin area, but on the actual webpage, the text was still left aligned. Another guy recommended I put something in my header code and link it to the something. Again, I know very little about this and would appreciate the easiest solution. Thx.
Add the following CSS (CSS has to be added within <style> tags):
<style>
td {
vertical-align: middle;
text-align: center;
}
</style>
Also.. remove one of the <table> tags:
<table style="margin:0px auto;" border="0">
<table border="0">
should be
<table style="margin:0px auto;" border="0">
<td style="text-align:center"></td>
If you want every cell centered, the easiest solution for you is to add the above to every cell.
you dont need the div above or the style in the table tag, and only one table tag :)
<table>
<tr>
<td style="text-align:center">centered text</td>
</tr>
</table>
Here are two simple ways:
<td align="left">foo</td>
<td style="text-align:left;">foo</td>
EDIT
As others have mentioned, you also need to remove the nested <table> tags.

Outlook 2010 displaying inconsistent spacing between table cells

I'm designing an HTML Newsletter and I've run into this problem:
As you can see, the cellspacing is completely out of whack: there shouldn't (and CAN'T) be a space between the rows on the left and right column. I don't really know what the culprit could be, any ideas would be appreciated!
Here's the relevant source code:
<table width="740" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="1">
<tr>
<td colspan="3">
<img src="top.jpg" width="740" height="53">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="3" height="200" valign="top" id="headerCell">
<img src="header.jpg" width="740" height="200" alt="Headerbild">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
L
</td>
<td valign="top" width="600" bgcolor="#ffffff">
CONTENT
</td>
<td>
R
</td>
</tr>
The HTML looks fine to me. Have you tried eliminating the unnecessary whitespace? That could be a possible cause (also, remember the great IE6, which had whitespace issues).
The HTML rendering engines in e-mail clients are just horrible. I've had to design some newsletters a while back and it sucked big time. Here's a nice collection of tips, maybe it'll be of some help.
I finally found out what was causing this spacing: a padding-top set on the center cell caused the left and right cells top edge to stay flush with the content-top of the center cell.