Padding a table row

<html>
    <head>
        <title>Table Row Padding Issue</title>
        <style type="text/css">
            tr {
                padding: 20px;
            }
        </style>
    </head>
    <body>
        <table>
            <tbody>
                <tr>
                    <td>
                        <h2>Lorem Ipsum</h2>
                        <p>Fusce sodales lorem nec magna iaculis a fermentum lacus facilisis. Curabitur sodales risus sit amet
                        neque fringilla feugiat. Ut tellus nulla, bibendum at faucibus ut, convallis eget neque. In hac habitasse 
                        platea dictumst. Nullam elit enim, gravida eu blandit ut, pellentesque nec turpis. Proin faucibus, sem sed 
                        tempor auctor, ipsum velit pellentesque lorem, ut semper lorem eros ac eros. Vivamus mi urna, tempus vitae 
                        mattis eget, pretium sit amet sapien. Curabitur viverra lacus non tortor luctus vitae euismod purus 
                        hendrerit. Praesent ut venenatis eros. Nulla a ligula erat. Mauris lobortis tempus nulla non 
                        scelerisque.</p>
                    </td>
                </tr>
            </tbody>
        </table>
    </body>
</html>

Here's what the padding looks like. See how the td inside isn't affected. What's the solution? Table Row Padding Issue

Solution 1:

The trick is to give padding on the td elements, but make an exception for the first (yes, it's hacky, but sometimes you have to play by the browser's rules):

td {
  padding-top:20px;
  padding-bottom:20px;
  padding-right:20px;   
}

td:first-child {
  padding-left:20px;
  padding-right:0;
}

First-child is relatively well supported: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/:first-child

You can use the same reasoning for the horizontal padding by using tr:first-child td.

Alternatively, exclude the first column by using the not operator. Support for this is not as good right now, though.

td:not(:first-child) {
  padding-top:20px;
  padding-bottom:20px;
  padding-right:20px;       
}

Solution 2:

In CSS 1 and CSS 2 specifications, padding was available for all elements including <tr>. Yet support of padding for table-row (<tr>) has been removed in CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 specifications. I have never found the reason behind this annoying change which also affect margin property and a few other table elements (header, footer, and columns).

Update: in Feb 2015, this thread on the [email protected] mailing list discussed about adding support of padding and border for table-row. This would apply the standard box model also to table-row and table-column elements. It would permit such examples. The thread seems to suggest that table-row padding support never existed in CSS standards because it would have complicated layout engines. In the 30 September 2014 Editor's Draft of CSS basic box model, padding and border properties exist for all elements including table-row and table-column elements. If it eventually becomes a W3C recommendation, your html+css example may work as intended in browsers at last.

Padding a table row

Solution 1:

Solution 2:

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