Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

CSS alternatives

Cell padding may be handled by applying the padding property to the td element. By using class, id, or more specific selectors, it is possible to apply different amounts of padding to different cells within a table (the cellpadding attribute applies the same amount of padding to all cells).

There is no CSS property that is exactly equivalent to the cellspacing attribute, although you can adjust the amount of space between cells by setting the border-collapse property for the table to separate and then use the border-spacing property to specify the amount of space between cell borders . The difference is that with the cellspacing attribute, the border is rendered thicker between cells, while the border-spacing property adds empty space between them.

Unfortunately, the border-spacing property is not supported by Internet Explorer 6 and earlier (support in IE 7 is not documented as of this writing), so authors are left with no practical CSS cellspacing substitute for the time being.

Tip

Many authors also explicitly set both the cellspacing and cellpadding to 0 (zero) to override default browser settings and clear the way for style sheet properties.