Better way to right align text in HTML Table

Html Problem Overview

I have an HTML table with large number of rows, and I need to right align one column.

I know the following ways,

<tr><td>..</td><td>..</td><td align='right'>10.00</td><tr>

and

<tr><td>..</td><td>..</td><td class='right-align-class'>10.00</td><tr>

In both the methods, I have to repeat the align or class parameter on every <tr> tag. (If there are 1000 rows, I have to put align='right' or class='right-align-class' 1000 times.)

Is there any efficient way to do this ? Is there any direct way to say, align the third column in all rows to right ?

Html Solutions

Solution 1 - Html

Updated (after 10+ years!): Yes! It's possible to do this more efficiently now, with widespread practical browser support, using the nth-child selector.

HTML:

<table>
<tr>
<td>foo 1</td>
<td>bar 1</td>
<td>baz 1</td>
<td>bap 1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>foo 2</td>
<td>bar 2</td>
<td>baz 2</td>
<td>bap 2</td>
</tr>
</table>

CSS:

table td { width: 20em; border: 1px solid black; }
table td:nth-child(3) { text-align: end; }

https://jsfiddle.net/mv83qszL/

Previously, it was not possible to do this, because browser support used to be inconsistent and hit-or-miss, especially with regard to newer CSS features. This made it impossible to use more elegant, efficient solutions -- and required lots of repetitive markup and class definitions in order to get consistent results across the audience's browser space.

See the edit history for the previous version of this answer.

Solution 2 - Html

You could use the nth-child pseudo-selector. For example:

table.align-right-3rd-column td:nth-child(3)
{
  text-align: right;
}

Then in your table do:

<table class="align-right-3rd-column">
  <tr>
    <td></td><td></td><td></td>
    ...
  </tr>
</table>

Edit:

Unfortunately, this only works in Firefox 3.5. However, if your table only has 3 columns, you could use the sibling selector, which has much better browser support. Here's what the style sheet would look like:

table.align-right-3rd-column td + td + td
{
  text-align: right;
}

This will match any column preceded by two other columns.

Solution 3 - Html

If it's always the third column, you can use this (assuming table class of "products"). It's kinda hacky though, and not robust if you add a new column.

table.products td+td+td {
  text-align: right;
}
table.products td,
table.products td+td+td+td {
  text-align: left;
}

But honestly, the best idea is to use a class on each cell. You can use the col element to set the width, border, background or visibility of a column, but not any other properties. Reasons discussed here.

Solution 4 - Html

Looking through your exact question to your implied problem:

Step 1: Use the class as you described (or, if you must, use inline styles).

Step 2: Turn on GZIP compression.

Works wonders ;)

This way GZIP removes the redundancy for you (over the wire, anyways) and your source remains standards compliant.

Solution 5 - Html

A number of years ago (in the IE only days) I was using the <col align="right"> tag, but I just tested it and and it seems to be an IE only feature:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
    <title>Test</title>
</head>
<body>
    <table width="100%" border="1">
        <col align="left" />
        <col align="left" />
        <col align="right" />
        <tr>
            <th>ISBN</th>
            <th>Title</th>
            <th>Price</th>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>3476896</td>
            <td>My first HTML</td>
            <td>$53</td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</body>
</html>

The snippet is taken from www.w3schools.com. Of course, it should not be used (unless for some reason you really target the IE rendering engine only), but I thought it would be interesting to mention it.

Edit:

IE still supports it.
Firefox has dropped support in 3.5.
Safari does not seem to support it, but the documentation indicates otherwise.

Overall, I don't understand the reasoning behing abandoning this tag. It would appear to be very useful (at least for manual HTML publishing).

Solution 6 - Html

This doesn't work in IE6, which may be an issue, but it'll work in IE7+ and Firefox, Safari etc. It'll align the 3rd column right and all of the subsequent columns left.

td + td + td { text-align: right; }
td + td + td + td { text-align: left; }

Solution 7 - Html

if you have only two "kinds" of column styles - use one as TD and one as TH. Then, declare a class for the table and a sub-class for that table's THs and TDs. Then your HTML can be super efficient.

Solution 8 - Html

The current draft of CSS Selectors Level 4 specifies structural selectors for grids. If implemented, we will be able to do things like:

th.price,
th.price || td {
    text-align: right;
}

Of course, that doesn't help us today -- the other answers here offer enough practical advice for that.

Solution 9 - Html

HTML5 messed up the col attribute functionality...

It is really uncool that HTML5 deprecated most of the col attributes and did not add the support for the style and class attributes. Modern browsers still holds support for its width attribute, but not for others. The width support will probably hold as it is used in table layout render algorithm.

...which can be fixed by defining CSS class series...

To achieve similar functionality without the need of editing every row, it can be achieved by defining

.right-1 td:nth-child(1),
.right-2 td:nth-child(2),
.right-3 td:nth-child(3),
.right-4 td:nth-child(4),
.right-5 td:nth-child(5), ...
  { text-align: right; }

which can be a single line with help of some CSS preprocessor / generator, but still acceptable without it as most web tables has reasonable number of columns. Then to right-align the third column, you can just

<table class="right-3">
...
</table>

...but it is just a poor hack :-(

CSS classes should hold the semantics. If they imply particular styles (like in the example above), it is semantically just legalized inline style attribute, merging the HTML with the design (CSS should separate it). This is what Bootstrap styles do, and this is what you should avoid if possible.

Solution 10 - Html

What you really want here is:

<col align="right"/>

but it looks like Gecko doesn't support this yet: it's been an open bug for over a decade.

(Geez, why can't Firefox have decent standards support like IE6?)

Solution 11 - Html

Use jquery to apply class to all tr unobtrusively.

$(”table td”).addClass(”right-align-class″);

Use enhanced filters on td in case you want to select a particular td.

See jquery

Solution 12 - Html

The <colgroup> and <col> tags that lives inside tables are designed for this purpose. If you have three columns in your table and want to align the third, add this after your opening <table> tag:

 <colgroup>
     <col />
     <col />
     <col class="your-right-align-class" />
 </colgroup>

along with the requisite CSS:

 .your-right-align-class { text-align: right; }

From the W3:

Definition and Usage

> > - The <col> tag defines attribute values for one or more columns in a table. > > - The <col> tag is useful for applying styles to entire columns, instead of repeating the styles for each cell, for each row.

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	Palani	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Html	Matt Howell	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Html	cdmckay	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - Html	DisgruntledGoat	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - Html	John Gietzen	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - Html	Jan Zich	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 6 - Html	Eifion	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 7 - Html	John Marno	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 8 - Html	Chris	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 9 - Html	Jan Turoň	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 10 - Html	Ken	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 11 - Html	Nrj	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 12 - Html	supertrue	View Answer on Stackoverflow