CSS: display:block; vs display:table;

Is there a difference between display:block; and display:table;? It looks to me like the display type of the dom-node containing table-row and table-cell nodes doesn't matter. MDN says that display:table; makes it behave like a table, but doesn't elaborate on what that behavior is. What is that behavior?

Similarly, is there a difference between display:inline-block; and display:inline-table;?

Comparing the two (block and table), I don't know of any core differences (there may be minor ones) you would see within a vacuum. I believe the major differences are specifically to children. Tables and their children have very different attributes/relationships than a div and its children.

As far as inline-block and inline-table see: What is the difference between inline-block and inline-table?

This article (http://css-tricks.com/almanac/properties/d/display/) has some interesting information, specifically regarding all the different display properties related to a table.

Both will be block-level, in that they won't display next to anything else, by default.

There is a significant difference in the actual display of the element. display: block; will extend to 100% of the available space, while display: table; will only be as wide as its contents.

Also, as others have mentioned, display: table; is required to get display: table-cell; or other table- stuff to work in the descendents.

I only know this because I just ran into the problem of trying to get the display: table; to fill the width of the container. I haven't been able to see if there is a difference in the display of display: inline; and display: inline-table;.

https://jsfiddle.net/nnbonhc6/

I was researching this today, and I found this section of the CSS spec to be helpful: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/tables.html#model

Notably,

the table generates a principal block box called the table wrapper box that contains the table box itself and any caption boxes (in document order). The table box is a block-level box that contains the table's internal table boxes.

As I understand it, this essentially means the browser generates an invisible container block for anything with display: table!

One difference that seems to exist is that display:table clears the line (as a display:block would) but does not expand to fill the line (a display block would take the maximum amount of width, an inline would not)

So you can get a box that resizes with your content, but stays alone in its "line"

One major benefit of using display: table instead of display: block on a parent element is that you can safely use display: inline-block on the child elements, without having to worry about the white-space between the children.

Otherwise you'd have to get rid of that extra white-space by using html comments between the closing/opening tags (for example with multiple <li> elements for the typical horizontal nav), or putting everything in-line in your code without carrier returns (which is an editing nightmare).