Colspan/Rowspan for elements whose display is set

Question

I have the following code:

<div class="table">
    <div class="row">
        <div class="cell">Cell</div>
        <div class="cell">Cell</div>
    </div>
    <div class="row">
        <div class="cell colspan2">Cell</div>
    </div>
</div>

<style>
    .table {
        display: table;
    }
    .row {
        display: table-row;
    }
    .cell {
        display: table-cell;
    }
    .colspan2 {
        /* What to do here? */
    }
</style>

Pretty straightforward. How do I add a colspan (or the equivalent of colspan) for elements with display: table-cell?

Answer 1

CSS

.tablewrapper {
  position: relative;
}
.table {
  display: table;
  position: relative
}
.row {
  display: table-row;
}
.cell {
  border: 1px solid red;
  display: table-cell;
}
.cell.empty
{
  border: none;
  width: 100px;
}
.cell.rowspanned {
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  bottom: 0;
  width: 100px;
}
.cell.colspan {
  position: absolute;
  left: 0;
  right: 0;
}

HTML

<div class="tablewrapper">
  <div class="table">
    <div class="row">
      <div class="cell rowspanned">
        Center
      </div>
      <div class="cell">
        Top right
      </div>
    </div>
    <div class="row">
      <div class="cell empty"></div>
      <div class="cell colspan">
        Bottom right
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

Code

Answer 2

It can be done just with pure CSS and centering the text across the "fake" colspan.

The trick is to set the rows to position:relative, then to place "empty divs" in the row where you want to make the colspan (they must have height in order to work), set the cell where the content is in as display:grid, and finally, applying position:absolute to the element inside the cell (and center it as you may center any other absolute element).

 .table {
        display: table;
  }
  .row {
      display: table-row;
      position: relative;
  }
  .cell {
      display: table-cell;
      background-color: blue;
      color: white;
      height: 26px;
      padding: 0 8px;
  } 
  .colspan2 {
      display: grid;
  }
  .colspan2 p {
    position:absolute;
    left: 50%;
    transform:translateX(-50%);
    margin: 0;
  }

<div class="table">
    <div class="row">
        <div class="cell">Cell</div>
        <div class="cell">Cell</div>
    </div>
    <div class="row">
        <div class="cell colspan2"><p>Cell</p></div>
        <div class="cell"></div>
    </div>
</div>

Answer 3

Even if this is an old question, I would like to share my solution to this problem.

<div class="table">
    <div class="row">
        <div class="cell">Cell</div>
        <div class="cell">Cell</div>
    </div>
    <div class="row">
        <div class="cell colspan">
            <div class="spanned-content">Cell</div>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>

<style>
    .table {
        display: table;
    }
    .row {
        display: table-row;
    }
    .cell {
        display: table-cell;
    }
    .colspan:after {
        /* What to do here? */
        content: "c";
        display: inline;
        visibility: hidden;
    }
    .spanned-content {
        position: absolute;
    }
</style>

Here is a fiddle. It's not really a span, and the solution is a bit hacky, but it is usefull in some situations. Tested on Chrome 46, Firefox 31 and IE 11.

In my case, I had to present some non-tabular data in a tabular way, keeping the width of the columns and giving title to sub-sections of the data.

Answer 4

As far as I know, the lack of colspan/rowspan is just one of the limitations of display:table. See this post:

http://www.onenaught.com/posts/201/use-css-displaytable-for-layout

Answer 5

If you're looking for a straight CSS way to simulate a colspan, you could use display: table-caption.

.table {
  display: table;
}
.row {
  display: table-row;
}
.cell {
  display: table-cell;
  border: 1px solid #000;
}
.colspan2 {
  /* What to do here? */
  display: table-caption;
}

<div class="table">
    <div class="row">
        <div class="cell">Cell</div>
        <div class="cell">Cell</div>
    </div>
    <div class="row">
        <div class="cell colspan2">Cell</div>
    </div>
</div>

Answer 6

You can't achieve this at present.

AFAIK this would be covered by CSS Tables, a specification which appears to currently be at "work in progress" state.