Test your skills: Tables

The aim of this skill test is to assess whether you understand how to style HTML tables in CSS.

Note: You can try out solutions in the interactive editors below. However, it may be helpful to download the code and use an online tool such as CodePen, jsFiddle, or Glitch to work on the tasks.

If you get stuck, then ask us for help — see the Assessment or further help section at the bottom of this page.

Task

In the lesson on styling tables we styled up a table in a rather garish manner. In this task, we are going to style the same table, but using some good practices for table design as outlined in the external article Web Typography: designing tables to be read not looked at.

Our finished table will look like the image below. There are a number of ways that you can achieve this, but we suggest you follow similar patterns as used in the tutorial to do the following things:

  • Add padding of 0.3em to the table headings and data and align them at the top of their cells.
  • Align headings and data for columns containing numbers right.
  • Align headings and data for columns containing text left.
  • Add a 1px top and bottom solid border with the hex color #999, plus a 1px solid border of the same color above the footer.
  • Remove the default spacing between the table elements borders to get the expected result.
  • Stripe every odd row of the main table with the hex color #eee.

A table with striped rows.

Try updating the live code below to recreate the finished example:

Additional question:

  • What can you do to make the table layout behave a bit more predictably? Think of how table columns are sized by default and how we can change this behavior to size the columns according to the width of their headings.

Download the starting point for this task to work in your own editor or in an online editor.

Assessment or further help

You can practice these examples in the Interactive Editors above.

If you would like your work assessed or are stuck and want to ask for help:

  1. Put your work into an online shareable editor such as CodePen, jsFiddle, or Glitch. You can write the code yourself or use the starting point files linked to in the above sections.
  2. Write a post asking for assessment and/or help at the MDN Discourse forum Learning category. Your post should include:
    • A descriptive title such as "Assessment wanted for the tables skill test".
    • Details of what you have already tried and what you would like us to do; for example, tell us if you're stuck and need help or want an assessment.
    • A link to the example you want assessed or need help with, in an online shareable editor (as mentioned in step 1 above). This is a good practice to get into — it's very hard to help someone with a coding problem if you can't see their code.
    • A link to the actual task or assessment page, so we can find the question you want help with.