How to create tables from column data instead of row data in HTML?

According to this article at W3 Schools, one can create a basic table in HTML like this:

<table border="1">
    <tr>
        <td>row 1, cell 1</td>
        <td>row 1, cell 2</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>row 2, cell 1</td>
        <td>row 2, cell 2</td>
    </tr>
</table>

From above, it appears that one enters data by rows.

I have a situation where I need to enter all of the data by columns. Is something like this possible?

<table border="1">
    <tc>
        <td>row 1, cell 1</td>
        <td>row 2, cell 1</td>
    </tc>
    <tc>
        <td>row 1, cell 2</td>
        <td>row 2, cell 2</td>
    </tc>
</table>

In modern browsers you can achieve this by redefining the TR and TD tags behavior in CSS. Given the HTML in your question attach the next CSS style:

table {
	display: table;
}
table tr {
	display: table-cell;
}
table tr td {
	display: block;
}

<table border="1">
    <tr>
        <td>row 1, cell 1</td>
        <td>row 2, cell 1</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>row 1, cell 2</td>
        <td>row 2, cell 2</td>
    </tr>
</table>

You can render tables in columns by using a table within a table...

<table>
<tr>
<td>
    <table>
        <thead>
            <tr>
                <td>column 1 header 1</td>
            </tr>
        </thead>
        <tbody>
            <tr>
                <td>column 1 row 1</td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>column 1 row 2</td>
            </tr>
        </tbody>
    </table>
</td>
<td>
    <table>
        <thead>
            <tr>
                <td>column 2 header 1</td>
            </tr>
        </thead>
        <tbody>
            <tr>
                <td>column 2 row 1</td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>column 2 row 2</td>
            </tr>
        </tbody>
    </table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

You're best bet is to render the table by rows, and then use javascript to invert the table

http://jsfiddle.net/CsgK9/2/

The following code will invert a table (this sample code uses jquery)

    $("table").each(function() {
        var $this = $(this);
        var newrows = [];

        $this.find("tr").each(function(){
            var i = 0;

            $(this).find("td").each(function(){
                i++;
                if(newrows[i] === undefined) { newrows[i] = $(""); }
                newrows[i].append($(this));
            });
        });

        $this.find("tr").remove();
        $.each(newrows, function(){
            $this.append(this);
        });
    });

UPDATE:

Here is a version that works with th elements as well: http://jsfiddle.net/zwdLj/

Just did this by using a bunch of uls filled with lis, seemed a lot cleaner than anything I could find. You'll have to do something like adding a class to all the uls and setting its style to display: inline-table.

@* pseudo html/razor *@
@foreach(var col in columns){
    <ul class='tableColumn'>
        foreach(var data in col){
            <li>data</li>
        }
    </ul>    
}

and some styling

.tableColumn {
    border: 1px solid;
    display: inline-table;
}