Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

The default value for empty-cells is show, which shows the background and borders for cells that do not contain any content. The hide value hides the cell’s background and borders and is equivalent to visibility: hidden.

For a cell to be “empty,” it may not contain any text or replaced elements, non-breaking spaces ( ) or whitespace. It may contain carriage returns (CR), line feeds (LF), and space characters.

Figure 22-5 shows the previous table border example, this time with empty elements set to hide.

    table {border-collapse: separate;
           border-spacing: 10px 3px;empty-cells: hide;
           border: none;}

    td { border: 1px solid black; }

Figure 22-5. Empty cells hidden with the empty-cells property

Tip

The empty-cells property is not supported by Internet Explorer through Version 6. Version 7 promises improved support of CSS 2.1, but as of this writing, support for empty-cells is not specifically documented.