Table directly between text edit

Hi! Is it possible to insert a table directly between two words, so it will look like this:

text text text text |TABLE| text text text 

? I have my own Wikia in scratchpad on wikia.com and I obviously get

text text text text (table should be here)
|TABLE| tex text text text

How to fix that? Thanks - Piotr mil 16:22, 28 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

One way I know is making the table an element in another table.--Patrick 23:54, 28 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
Thanks alot! Piotr mil 17:29, 1 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

Tables too hard to use edit

Hi just a rant, I find using tables in mediawiki is not straightforward enough. You almost need to know how to program in html. It would be a good idea I think to have a simpler way of creating them. Just my 2 cents...

Lots of us agree with you. Can you program something better? — Omegatron 20:54, 20 May 2006 (UTC)Reply
Something like reStructuredText would be good. Tables look like tables. mediawiki tables are harder to read than HTML tables. It seems to defeat the purpose of a wiki. Granted, reStructuredText tables don't allow for fancy tables, but it probably serves for 90% of the typical uses.

Take for example Help:Table#M.C3.A9lange, what happens if you add this:

| colspan="3" align="left"|
{| border="0" align="center"

It's a confict! A table is an object, IMO. It's weird to define an object's spacing inside the object's syntax'. You should first define the objects spacing, then define the object and then define the general format of the text inside this object. Kassie 13:09, 22 October 2006 (UTC)Reply

You are thinking in proper programming thought, considering a table to be an object like that, and in that line of reasoning, you are correct, it IS an object and should be defined externally. And you are also correct, HTML tables are much easier to reason out. The problem is that there are enough similarities between mediawiki tables and HTML tables to cause confusion among even the best of us.
The best advice I have is to just go with what is available, and deal with the hassles of setting up a mediawiki table. I am trying to learn how to post, edit, and adjust tables in mediawiki myself, and it is tough going.
69.182.188.52 19:19, 27 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Excel Macro for simple tables edit

I have written a macro that exports a table from Excel into a plain text file that is suitable for cutting-n-pasting into this wiki. I posted the source on my discussion page - you should be able to cut-n-paste this into excel's VBA IDE (alt-F11) --Don 17:41, 9 December 2006 (UTC)Reply

Doesn't Excel already have an option to save the file as a comma (or other seperator) delimited text file? It seems to be making more work for yourself to do it that way, but more power to you.
69.182.188.52 19:21, 27 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Section header underlines running into tables edit

I have come across this problem on my own wiki that I am setting up just now. This was the first page on wikipedia that I found which demonstrated the problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Botswana&oldid=49742070

You will see that the lines under the section titles for History and Geography run into the infobox. If you scroll down to the sections on Labour and Defence, you will see the lines stop before they touch the thumb box. Is there any way to prevent the lines running into the infobox?

I am having this problem on my own wiki so I can change CSS or anything required. --81.103.41.71 21:50, 25 April 2006 (UTC)Reply

The background property of all tables should be set to default to white , not transparent.
This will solve the problem. Regards, WPHyundai, 3-7-8
That seems to happen to alot of the graphics on a lot more than just tables. I use the Guild Wars wiki and that happens alot to the info boxes and warning boxes. Is there a similar setting to use on the other items?
"Remember remember the 5th of November . . . " Guy Fawkes 19:48, 27 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Conditional Rows the easy way edit

It seems that having conditional rows in tables is easier than is currently mentioned on the table help page. I wonder am I missing something. For example I can have:

{| class=wikitable
  {{ #if:1|{{!}}-                     <!-- Row one will be shown because the '1' evaulates to TRUE -->
             !  row one, column one
           {{!}}row one, column two <!-- {{!}}'s get evaluated to the pipe character '|', i.e. template:! just contains '|' -->
  {{ #if: |{{!}}-                     <!-- Row two NOT shown because the space between the ':' and the '|' evaluates to FALSE  -->
             !  row two, column one 
           {{!}}row two, column two}}
  |-                                  <!-- Row three will be shown -->
             ! row three, column one
             | row three, column two
|}

which gives the following table: (note how the second row is missing)

row one, column one row one, column two
row three, column one row three, column two

I wonder does this work now because the version of wikimedia software has been updated? Pnelnik 14:05, 17 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

This gives excess newlines in the case of consecutive conditional rows with false condition.--Patrick (talk) 23:34, 7 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I agree, and there's another cleaner solution:
{|class="wikitable"
|+style="color:green"| Table caption {{#if:1|<nowiki/>
  {{!}}-                         <!-- (unconditional) header row -->
  !scope="col"{{!}} 1
  !scope="col"{{!}} 2

}}{{ #if:1|<nowiki/>
  {{!}}-                     <!-- Row one will be shown because the non-empty '1' evaulates to TRUE -->
  !scope="row"{{!}} row one, column one
  {{!}} row one, column two <!-- {{!}}'s get evaluated to the pipe character '|', i.e. template:! just contains '|' -->

}}{{ #if: |<nowiki/>
  {{!}}-                     <!-- Row two NOT shown because the space between the ':' and the '|' evaluates to FALSE  -->
  !scope="row"{{!}} row two, column one 
  {{!}} row two, column two

}}{{ #if: |<nowiki/>
  {{!}}-                     <!-- Row two NOT shown because the space between the ':' and the '|' evaluates to FALSE  -->
  !scope="row"{{!}} row three, column one 
  {{!}} row three, column two

}}{{ #if:1|<nowiki/>
  {{!}}-                     <!-- Row four will be shown because the non-empty '1' evaluates to TRUE -->
  !scope="row"{{!}} row four, column one
  {{!}} row four, column two <!-- {{!}}'s get evaluated to the pipe character '|', i.e. template:! just contains '|' -->

}}
|}
which gives the following table: (note how the second and third rows are missing, and there's no extra newlines visible after the table or inside the last cell of a visible row just above the hidden rows)
Table caption
1 2
row one, column one row one, column two
row four, column one row four, column two
Note that this syntax allows a blank line separation in the source code between each row (they are within the #if, so they will be trimmed.) all rows start by the same }}{{#if:, and all rows use the same column separators and the same syntax for the row header. If needed (where you need to have embedded #if for groups of rows), you can insert a dummy #if. This form of syntax also allows indenting these #if.
Note also that I no longer use the "pre" element for sourcing wiki code as it still requires modifying the source against templates and parser functions; I use instead the "source" element with the lang="html5" attribute, with also colorizes the HTML syntax (e.g. the comments are grey and italic), but still preserves the newlines in the source wiki code.
Unfortunately the "source" parser still does not have a long="mediawiki" that can recognize the ?ediaWiki syntax and colorize the wiki code itself (notably to distinguish double or triple braces, or the pipes used as parameter separators in template/parserfunction inclusions from pipes used by tables, or to colorize some known builtin keywords like those __CAPITALIZED_WITH_DOUBLE_UNDERSCORES__), and I still don't know which external editor supports the complex wiki syntax; not even the code editor of MediaWiki itself !
So the wiki syntax appears just as normal text with "htmk5", but it is far better than using the "pre" element. verdy_p (talk) 23:19, 28 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

Change border edit

Hi, how do i change the internal cell borders also...is there any easier way?

{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" align="center" style="border:1px solid black;"
!style="border:1px solid black;" |Cell 1, row 1
!style="border:1px solid black;"| Cell 2, row 1
|- !style="border:1px solid black;"| Cell 1, row 2
!style="border:1px solid black;"| Cell 2, row 2
|} </nowiki>

Cell 1, row 1 Cell 2, row 1
Cell 1, row 2 Cell 2, row 2
Your problem is Cellspacing. With increased cell spacing you will be able to separate the two borders clearly. Cellspacing is the space between these two borders.

Regards, WPHyundai, 3-7-8

Empty Row edit

How do I put an empty row to provide white space in my table?

I've tried the following and numerious other combinations but I can't seem to get anything to work.

{|
|Cell||Cell||Cell
|-
|
|-
|Cell||Cell||Cell
|}

I want my table to look like the following

Cell Cell Cell
[blank space]
Cell Cell Cell
Specify the height of the empty row.--Patrick 02:47, 25 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

Thanks Patrick, I feel a bit silly now, it's so obvious. I've now added style="height:20px" to the empty row and all looks good. Thank you for your help.

{|
|Cell||Cell||Cell
|-style="height:20px"
|
|-
|Cell||Cell||Cell
|}

Bug report edit

A table inside another table doesn't work when started after a table header:

This header has red background.
This cell has no special background color.

But it works fine when started after a table cell:

This header has red background.
This cell is used as a workaround.
This cell has no special background color.

The problem is that the th tag isn't closed properly when followed by a {|. --Head 16:39, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think it should be possible to do it with colspans and rowspans (he wrote ... ten years later) --Simon Fecke (talk) 10:28, 12 April 2013 (UTC)Reply


Width edit

How to specify width in percentage? --Menchi 11:54, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

table isn't filtering
its properties ...

So I reported this as a bug. --grin 09:47, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

What is the foo="bar" thing? --Menchi 18:10, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)
An example of an invalid (correctly filtered out) property. --grin 11:51, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Damn us. The bloody thing needs a space after {| you see. Without it it ignores the first word. Nice thing is that nobody seemed to care to notice, only an anon submitter on sf.net. Thanks, anon, whoever you were. *shame* --grin 08:20, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)


HTML tables edit

I hope we are going to switch off html-table suport soon.

A mix of both is pretty ugly.

Mixing them might be ugly, but to be honest, I think overall, the HTML table is easier for novices to work with, and since so many people are already used to how it works, seeing about more support for HTML compatible tables would be the way to go, IMO. Possibly, even phasing the current table system into HTML tables instead of what is being used on here. Since the way to see this site (and the information on it) is to use a browser that already uses HTML, it would seem to make more sense to do that.
"Remember remember the 5th of November . . . " Guy Fawkes 19:52, 27 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Indent edit

How do we indent tables? : doesn't work. It disables the table markup. --Menchi 18:20, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

This should work:
grin is blind :)
grin is stupid :)
but obviously gets filtered as well. Buggy. But you may always use DIVs:
table is cool
table is cool
--grin 11:59, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Nah, again, you need space before table status lines, or you get screwed. See? I woke up. --grin 08:20, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Somebody used <blockquote>, and it seems to work perfectly, and in-sync with colon (indent for messages). --Menchi 08:44, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Bot for semi-automating HTML -> WikiTable markup? edit

I love the new wikitext table syntax but I am not looking forward to converting the hundred or so element tables to the new format (not to mention the many hundreds of organism, country and division articles!). Would it be possible to create a bot like the date bot that can be used by a user on an article by article basis? This bot, IMO, should not have the ability to select articles and should be controlled by a human for every article it touches, but it would prevent that human from spending hours doing the conversion by hand. An added benefit of this would be to greatly increase the number of example wiki tables - as it is there are very few and thus not much opportunity for people to learn the new syntax. Maybe we should have a bot user organizational page here on meta (maybe even a Wikibot-l for that matter!). --Maveric149 06:54, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)~

A bot would be helpful. --Menchi 09:51, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I think Benutzer:Zwobot has been doing this on the German Wikipedia. Angela 19:37, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I think we should leave the users the choice between the two. The special markup is anything but simple and can't be debugged by the usual tools. -- User:Docu

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/pywikipediabot/pywikipedia/


`

colspan edit

Why doesn't colspan work? (Only rowspan does) --Menchi 13:03, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

It works now:

{| border=1
|colspan=2 | A, A Upper
|----
| A, B
| B, B
|}

A, A Upper
A, B B, B
It needs another | after colspan, and that it must immediately precede the 1st cell to be spanned (not on different line). So, the following does not work:
A, A Upper
A, B B, B
--Menchi 08:33, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I am not sure what the standard on this wiki is, but I am a user of the Guild Wars wiki, and the settings in those tables put quotes around the number being used, i.e. colspan="2". Not sure if that would work here or not, but it should. After all, it is the same basic backbone on the two.
"Remember remember the 5th of November . . . " Guy Fawkes 19:55, 27 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Has this been thought true? edit

I've dreamt up a simple syntax fot simple tables and posted a link to it on the village pump, but was advised that one alreay exists.

So I looked it up, and on the first glance it looks fabulous. But on further consideration, I have issues with it: (note that I'm primarily talking about wikipedia. I can understand that this is great for other wikis)

  • The use of html attributes makes it marginally less ugly than html
  • It's not that more obvious than html. The power of wikitax is that one does not need rendering to read it - printed source is perfectly humanly readable.
  • Do we really want editors to be able to set colors and borders and what not of tables? Doesn't this go against separating content from presentation?
  • Do we need a special markup for complex tables? html is already there and I don't think it would be easy to make it illegal in wikipedia - think of all those pages to convert.

So, all in all, my simple syntax looks more reasonable - it's less ugly, more intuitive and does only what's needed for most tables. Or is it entirely too late for this discussion? Zocky 01:34, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

A couple of things: yes, it's been thought through fairly extensively; see Wiki markup tables for about a million different proposed formats.
It's probably too late for this discussion. Considering how long it took to get table markup into Wikitext, I think it's doubtful anyone wants to open the concept back up again. I think probably the best idea would be to start suggesting some fixed or corrections to the current structure.
I think, for presentation, Magnus has started adding some CSS styles for particular tables to the MediaWiki stylesheets. --Evan 03:12, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Is it just me that is seeing things this way or does it seem to anyone else that this is a huge effort for nothing, since HTML already has table capabilities. It would seem to me, although this might be too little too late, that having this whole entire table system, that is similar to HTML (but just off enough to be a huge pain in the butt) but different in enough ways to make it hard to work with, is a big issue. Why not just stop trying to add to a system when there is already one in place? Instead, spend the effort to make it so that the system in use now can revert back to being more HTML friendly.
69.182.188.52 21:03, 27 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Table Header attributes edit

Hm. I had a little trouble figuring out how to set attributes for table header lines (<th>). I expected something different. You need this:

{|
!style="background:red"| red
!style="background:green"| green
!style="background:blue"| blue
|-
| this
| is
| dumb
|}

which gives:

red green blue
this is dumb

I expected ! marks to be used for the attributes like this:

{|
!style="background:red"! red
!style="background:green"! green
!style="background:blue"! blue
|-
| this
| is
| dumb
|}

...but it doesn't work:

style="background:red"! red style="background:green"! green style="background:blue"! blue
this is dumb

Mulad Jan 17, 2004


style="background:red"! red style="background:green"! green style="background:blue"! blue
this is dumb

--Menchi 08:44, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)


So what happens if you want a normal exclamation point inside your table cell? JDG 06:15, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Do you all know why this page is useless to me? edit

You will.

See, I want an easy table syntax. This one seems to be quite easy, good enough for me (even though I have proposed syntaxes I like better). I want an easy table syntax, because HTML is ugly and un-wiki. I also don't care so much about HTML that I know it. But, to reaching for the easy table syntax I met one obstacle: You all expect me to know the HTML to learn the simple syntax!! Then it ain't a improvement, cause I can just learn HTML first and skip learning this as a second step!!! (And also, a simple syntactic remap of the HTML, is that useful?)

Bah. This is a user guide, I hope, so I sort of expected something helpful... Sverdrup (talk) 18:27, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Compared to HTML, this *is* an easy syntax. You can create fairly complex tables with this which are still editable, far more easily than HTML tables. The only HTML maybe needed are the table properties (params), which can always be copy&pasted. Darkelf 19:34, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
They mean that it isn't obvious how tables, cells, headers, rows, columns are arranged. It is based off of the HTML version, which is kind of confusing as it is, so the wiki markup is only as nonconfusing as the original HTML. So we need more of a beginners guide: "A table is this. We divide it up into rows and cells. This is a row this is a cell. This is how we notate each. Attributes are..." - Omegatron 16:22, 7 May 2004 (UTC)Reply
I'd like to second (or third, I suppose) that request for a beginner's guide to tables, designed for people who know a little Wiki markup and no HTML. Perhaps this page is useful to people who know how to make tables in HTML, but to the HTML-illiterate (like me) it's clear as mud. --Josiah Rowe 13:00, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Check out my proposal: en:Wikipedia:Proposal for intuitive table editor and namespace - Omegatron 05:42, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
In the meantime - grow up!
Here is a quick ref list, which is all that most people seem to need.

Nemesis 3-7-8

In my opinion, the only problem with HTML being less well known is that people haven't bothered to try to understand it. They take one look and give up. It isn't that hard to figure out, and doing tables in HTML can be easy. You can even do nested tables. The biggest issue I see is that people just haven't put together a guide similar (there actually is, but I forget the URL for it) to the one that is here for wiki tables (which, if I knew how to do things in it, I would add to, sections like, can you set the format for all the cells to be the same alignment, or the same colour, etc.)
69.182.188.52 21:10, 27 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Text wrapping edit

Independencfdsae Augfdsaust 19, 1919
Currencdfdsy Affdsafghani
Tifdsafme zone UTfdsafdsC
Nationm Soufds-Melli
Ir!net TLD .AF
caption caption

This gfdsgfdsis the cagfdsgption. Example taken from Afghanistan table. dsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds adsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds adsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds adsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds adsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds adsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds adsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds is shown on the right.

 
table touching wrapped text

In my browser (FireFox with Cologne Blue skin), the table can actually touch the text that wraps around it, if I resize the window to the right width (probably also if i had the text justified). There should be a little space between them. I will test with other settings. - Omegatron 19:14, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hmm. Does it with different skins. Doesn't do it in IE, any skins, but the space is still really small. - Omegatron

Solution is to use style="margin-left:0.5em" (and I've moved the caption statement to the correct position), which gives ... Noisy 07:44, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)
caption caption
Independencfdsae Augfdsaust 19, 1919
Currencdfdsy Affdsafghani
Tifdsafme zone UTfdsafdsC
Nationm Soufds-Melli
Ir!net TLD .AF

This gfdsgfdsis the cagfdsgption. Example taken from Afghanistan table. dsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds adsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds adsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds adsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds adsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds adsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds adsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds is shown on the right.

Not sure whether or not I have understood this problem or even if it truly represents a problem, but the bit that was understood by me was that adjusible margins for the table were needed.
To set margins for any table procede as for your table here: Notice that the table margins can be set to any distance: I prefer justified text, hough many do not:
{| border=1 align=right style="margin:10px 60px 10px 60px;"
|[[Independencfdsae]]||[[Augfdsaust 19]], [[1919]]
|-
|[[Currencdfdsy]]||[[Affdsafghani]]
|-
|[[Tifdsafme zone]]||[[UTfdsafdsC]]
|-
|[[Nationm]]||[[Soufds-Melli]]
|-
|[[Top-level domn|Ir!net TLD]]||.AF
|+ '''caption caption'''
|}

which gives:

Independencfdsae Augfdsaust 19, 1919
Currencdfdsy Affdsafghani
Tifdsafme zone UTfdsafdsC
Nationm Soufds-Melli
Ir!net TLD .AF
caption caption

dsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds adsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds adsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds adsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds adsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds adsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds adsaf dsfa dsaf fds afd asf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsaf dsafds afds afdf ds fdsaf fd saf dsa fds fds afd safd sf saf dsa fdsa fd afds afds

Here are a few more table style rules which may be useful.

By the way, justified text seems not to be liked by this project. The margin notes are in the sequence top, right, bottom, then left, and can be adjusted independently of one another to any extent that you wish. Regards, WPHyundai, 3-7-8

Table width to allow for caption line wraps edit

Currently:

 
Foo Bar, the former Precedent of Castro-Aguantilo Manesticilla
Courtesy CIA, 2001


What about this:

 
Foo Bar, the former Precedent of Castro-Aguantilo Manesticilla Courtesy CIA, 2001


Allowing the image to set the width, and the text to wrap to the width.? -Anonifty


The problem description is missing here. What

is it?

Table border color edit

Hi,

Excuse my ignorance, but how can one specify a bordercolor for a table. It seems that the HTML attribute <table bordercolor="red"> and the wiki markup
{| bordercolor="red" don't work. I'm also very interested in using bordercolorlight and bordercolordark.

Thanks,

Acegikmo1 18:26, Jul 7, 2004 (UTC)

style="border-color: red;"Omegatron 13:51, 18 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

Doesn't help really. I also can not get the IE to show the borders right. The attribute bordercolor would help, but the wiki parser seems to delete it. At least it does not show up in the HTML source code of the final page. Any reason for that and any idea of how to avoid this?

The style rule for border color is just style="border:2px solid blue" places a blue border on the table. Regards, WPHyundai, 3-7-8. It is used in the form:
{| style="border:2px solid blue"
| This is the text
|}

which gives:

This is the text

Regards, WPhyundai,3-7-8

Thanks... I've been banging my head about this for a while now... maybe it should be included in the page (although it might be a bit too big already) 190.74.72.74 15:17, 25 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

Cell border color edit

Any suggestions on how to get the border around each cell in the table to have a color? This is not producing the results I expected.

Tfischer83702 09:17, Nov 17, 2013

{| style="border:2px solid blue" border=2
| This is the text || and more text
|-
| and another row || with two columns
|}

Results:

This is the text and more text
and another row with two columns

Wi-i-i-i-ide page edit

Can we do something to avoid the super-wide page (see the "Mélange" example)? Wait, shouldn't a wide preformatted-text region be shown in a box with a horizontal scroll bar? I swear I saw that somewhere... - dcljr 08:16, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

wikipedia:MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css#pre autoflow. I think this should be used anywhere where overflow is a problem, not just pre sections. Maybe even in the diff pages for when foreign language links overflow? I will test if that's possible... - Omegatron 13:54, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I think that the wiki looks at the pre tag and throws all formatting out the window (sorry, bad pun) including the word wrap format, so that any text inbetween the pre tags will go to the end of the line that the user put in there in the beginning. See the following for the example.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.  I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.  The People should not be afraid of the Government.  The Government should be afraid of the People.
and with style="overflow:auto" (no more overflow but text will now scroll horizontally):
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.  I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.  The People should not be afraid of the Government.  The Government should be afraid of the People.
and with style="white-space:pre-wrap" (no more overflow but text will wrap, hopefully without scrolling provided there's no extra-long "word" larger than the available width; excluding margins and borders):
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.  I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.  The People should not be afraid of the Government.  The Government should be afraid of the People.
same text below in a list item (will wrap lines; hopefully without scrolling)
  • The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. I regret that I have but one life to give for my country. The People should not be afraid of the Government. The Government should be afraid of the People.

I think that the pre tags should be setup so that any other formatting is gone, that is OK, so it gives people a place to show table set up etc, but to make it word wrap to fit the browser window automatically. Having to add more stuff to get it to wrap is a pain, and not many people would think to do that.

69.182.188.52 21:19, 27 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Where's the script? edit

Okay, where's the HTML-to-wiki conversion script? The link to http://www.uni-bonn.de/~manfear/html2wiki-tables.php didn't work for me yesterday or today. - dcljr 01:23, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Decimal point alignment edit

Is there a better way to get columns of numbers aligned at the decimal point? Using &_nbsp;s is kludgy, but it looks right on my browser.Using aligned columns for the parts of the numbers leaves too much space around the decimal point:

432.1     432 . 1
  43.21     43 . 21
    4.321     4 . 321

Wwoods 17:26, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Described here and here, but I can't make it work, I'm afraid. Perhaps it's not available in this implementation. I've copied the example, and you can see that a number of items aren't parsed.
<COLGROUP> <COL><COL align="char" char="."> <THEAD>
Vegetable Cost per kilo

<TBODY>

Lettuce $1
Silver carrots $10.50
Golden turnips $100.30
432.1
43.21
4.321

Noisy 09:51, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The examples use a new row |- after a caption |+. However, this is not required in html, because the caption is not in a row, and therefore not required in wikitax, because the first row is created implicitly.

Not sure how this would work for non-money decimals, but, for money decimals at least, you could align=right for all of the boxes that have that information in it. Of course, you probably already thought of that.
69.182.188.52 21:21, 27 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

I use Template:Decimals for decimal-alignment. You can specify how many decimal points you want, plus it will evaluate an expression without needing extra markup code. Works great, every time!

TheRealPella (talk) 01:44, 17 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Needs to implement COL, COLGROUP edit

From HTML 4.0 (up to XHTML 2.0 draft) it is supported to attribute (or group) columns, or vertical cells. This is done by using COL and COLGROUP (X)HTML tags, like our fellow editor tried to do just right above.

First, I propose these tags not to be filtered. (I will share this view with bugzilla.) This would make it possible to use the tags the "ugly" way: as HTML tags. Example (see it working here):

<colgroup style="background: blue;"><col /><col /></colgroup> <col style="background: cyan; color: #900000" /> <colgroup style="background: red;" span="2" />
loremipsumdolorsitamet
loremipsumdolor
loremipsumdolorsitamet

Better would be to implement the syntax in wikitables. The above table could be:

@( style="background: blue;" @ @@ @) @ style="background: cyan; color: #900000" @( style="background: red;" span="2" @)
lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
lorem ipsum dolor
lorem ipsum dolor sit amet


Proposed syntax:

@( [<attrs>]
begin of colgroup
@)
end of colgroup (required, because cols can be outside of any group)
@( [<attrs>] @)
colgroup with attributes only, no cols
@ [<attrs>] [ @@ [<attrs>] [ @@ ... ] ]
col

col/colgroup is only acceptable between table start and first TR or TD. The | or |- closes open colgroups. I tried to follow current table syntax. --grin 10:17, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

These two tables should be identical edit

Here is an HTML table and its Wiki equivalent taken from en:List of countries by population. They should look the same. But note the amount of space between the second and third lines in the two examples. If you check the HTML source that the browser receives, there's a <p> </p> pair inserted in the table, in different places in the two tables!

People's Republic of China

 - Mainland China

Total
 

 1,286,975,468

 1,294,839,541
People's Republic of China

 - Mainland China
Total

 

 1,286,975,468
 1,294,839,541

Bug? Dbenbenn 23:10, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A new way to edit tables / Separate table namespace edit

(I've crossposted this a few times and received no response. Maybe this is the right place for a discussion?)

  1. I think tables should have their own namespace, as they are fundamentally different from articles and clutter up the markup.
  2. I have an idea for a new kind of editor specifically for the table namespace, to make tables more easily editable in the spirit of a wiki.

Please see the discussion on en:Wikipedia:Proposal for intuitive table editor and namespace - Omegatron 15:29, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)


Bad XHTML code recommendation edit

XHTML is the new recommended markup language, and future internet-accessible devices will more than likely use it to process information to the exclusion of regular old html. That means any tables in wiki that use the <td> tag without the </td> might not be viewable on handheld devices or the like in the future. Granted, so far every platform understand bad html like this, but it just won't be like that in the future. I've removed the recommendation to use it. Contact me on my Wikipedia User talk page for comments, as I don't go on meta-wiki that often. - Eric Herboso 199.88.26.254 03:26, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, HTML version 4 has been adopted an ISO standard, while XHTML has not. It is very unlikely that support for HTML tag syntax will ever be dropped by any serious browsers. If you are trying to render complex tables on handheld devices, unclosed tags are the least of your worries. I know you mean well, but this is just not good advice. The extra XHTML column in all the examples is of dubious value on a help page, too. --71.141.121.154 13:18, 15 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

My version of pipe syntax intro edit

Once upon a time I started making a new introduction to tables using the pipe syntax. It's over here on Wikipedia. Eventually I lost interest in it. If someone likes what I've done, they can steal it and merge it into this page (Help:Table). - dcljr 22:37, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Tables mid-paragraph edit

It seems that a block of table-code inserted into the middle of a paragraph will break that paragraph into two paragraphs. If you want a table whose top isn't aligned with the top of a paragraph (say, because, it's a lengthy paragraph and a small table and the table is more relevant to the end of that paragraph than the beginning) is there a way to do this? 130.126.101.243 15:01, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I cannot see how at this stage. It needs more knowledge of the reasons why tables start on a new paragraph. Try the style sheets. WPHyundai, 3-7-8

caption style edit

there appears to be no way to pass params to a caption tag? - Omegatron 15:46, 18 May 2005 (UTC)Reply

vertical alignment edit

Often I want *every* cell in a table to be top-aligned, like this:

a lots and
lots and
lots and
lots of text
aa
b lots and
lots and
lots and
lots and lots
of text
bb

Is there some way to indicate that once-and-for-all at the beginning of the table, rather than repeating it for each and every row ? (Well, at least I don't have to repeat it for every cell).

I was hoping something like this would work:

{| valign="top"
|-
| a || lots and<br>lots and<br>lots and<br>lots of text || aa
|-
| b || lots and<br>lots and<br>lots and<br>lots and lots<br>of text || bb
|}

But that looks like this:

a lots and
lots and
lots and
lots of text
aa
b lots and
lots and
lots and
lots and lots
of text
bb

which on my browser looks no different than the default (centered top-to-bottom). (Top-aligned sometimes makes it easier to see where the text from one cell ends, and where the text from the cell below it begins).

(The <table valign="top"> tag does show up in the rendered HTML source ... so I *expected* this last table to render the way I wanted it to (according to my interpretation of http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/tables.html#h-11.3.2.1 ). Is it a browser bug in Mozilla 1.8b2 ? )

--DavidCary 06:06, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Comparing with align="right" one can see that applying things like that to the table controls positioning of the table itself, not of the contents in each cell, see Template talk:Table demo. For the latter you can use in HTML
<tbody valign="top">
but that is not allowed in wikitext, see HTML#Permitted_HTML. We could make a feature request.--Patrick 08:19, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Wow, I was experimenting for hours and got no result. So that's why! --schw 13:32, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Hi - I found the easiest way is to look at the "source" code in the browser that MW has generated, and then style for that using MediaWiki:Common.css. For example, to vertical align text in my rows when using a template, I just put the template inside a div with id=datatemplate, then used this CSS: #datatemplate tr {vertical-align: text-top;}

Help... mysterious CSS/Table wiki update? edit

Hey all,

I went and slapped together a relatively headache-inducing templates-within-templates system some time ago to generate coloured histograms for Wikipedia's Canadian politics articles... an example being here. This would allow a relatively simple bit of template input and variable-setting on Joe User's part to generate a series of nice little boxes in a line that pulled standardized party colours from where they are centrally stored elsewhere in wikipedia.

Finally got it working and implemented it over on pages like Canadian federal election results in Nova Scotia. As you might have guessed, at the time of launch, the end result was a horizontal line of boxes, which integrated into the page layout quite nicely. Unfortunately, at some point in the last little while, the histograms stopped stacking horizontally and started appearing vertically. Now, there's been no alteration to the table structure of the assorted template files that generate the histograms, but the output (in all browsers) has shifted... this makes me think that the only explanation is that some knob deep in the bowels of metawiki got switched and now the table output is functioning differently than it did before.

So, looking for any kind of help or explanation that can be found. Someone bumping the table code in those template files so that they go back to displaying horizontally would be much loved. -The_Tom 9 July 2005 03:58 (UTC)

Apparently consecutive tables are now stacked vertically, but you can avoid that by putting them in cells of a surrounding table, and have them stacked horizontally. I fixed w:Template:Canadian politics/party colours/histogram/3, you can do the same for the other ones.--Patrick 9 July 2005 07:11 (UTC)
Thanks Patrick, see how that works now. That solves the problem of each box in a colour group being horizontally arranged, but still means that between colours there's a carriage return. So long as each colour group is set by an individual template insert, it's seems impossible to get an overall horizontal arrangement without getting into putting the whole series of template inserts into yet another table that encompasses the whole thing. The other alternative is building the whole multicoloured string of them out of one monstrous multi-variable template, which would again solve the problem by putting everything into one table.
The thing is, now that all consecutive tables are automatically stacked vertically, it would seem to me to be impossible for anyone to implement any kind of similar system anywhere in the wiki—and not just histograms like my one weird example, but any situation where someone wants generate tables that will happily sit in-line horizontally with one another where inserting an overarching table to circumvent the vertical stack rule is impossible or unworkable. I'm rather curious what decision-making process was behind deciding to put in that automatic vertical stack? Surely
{|blah blah|}{|blah 2 blah2|}
can be distinguished from
{|
blah blah
|}
{|
blah2 blahh2
|}
Was this just a little thought-of correction during a version update, or was there a broader discussion about it at the time? -The_Tom 9 July 2005 17:34 (UTC)
Note that a template can also produce the syntax for part of a table, such as that for a row or a cell. It does not seem necessary to make each little box a table.
I don't know whether the change was deliberate. --Patrick 9 July 2005 19:23 (UTC)
   
   
   
   


  • Halló! The left table is supposed to use font-size:100% and the right font-size:20%. Nevertheless the height is the same. How could it be decreased?
  • There is a discrepancy between preview and final page at en:Talk:Most-perfect magic square#about the unique binary pattern. (Plese note that this is not the same wiki and another software release could be installed at en:.) (At en:) In preview the height is related to normal text / about 100%? of normal text. After saving this changes. This is (now 20:09, August 16, 2005 (UTC)) not the case at [[:meta:]].
  • Most likly "width:20px; height:20px;" are "overwritten" in preview. Regards Gangleri | Th | T 20:09, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
Compare with [1]. 20:16, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

Header markup not consistent with cell markup edit

So this:

{| border="1"
! × !! 1 !! 2 !! 3
|-
! 1
| 1 || 2 || 3
|-
! 2
| 2 || 4 || 6
|-
! 3
| 3 || 6 || 9
|}

makes this:

× 1 2 3
1 1 2 3
2 2 4 6
3 3 6 9

but this:

{| border="1"
! × !! 1 !! 2 !! 3
|-
! 1 || 1 || 2 || 3
|-
! 2 || 2 || 4 || 6
|-
! 3 || 3 || 6 || 9
|}

makes this:

× 1 2 3
1 1 2 3
2 2 4 6
3 3 6 9

and this:

{| border="1"
! × !! 1 !! 2 !! 3
|-
! 1 !! 1 || 2 || 3
|-
! 2 !! 2 || 4 || 6
|-
! 3 !! 3 || 6 || 9
|}

makes this:

× 1 2 3
1 1 2 3
2 2 4 6
3 3 6 9

I would expect the second to give the same output as the first. Is this illogical or should I submit a bug report? — Omegatron 19:06, 6 September 2005 (UTC)Reply

Transparent borders and rules edit

Is there a way, either WikiMarkup or HTML, to create a table that has cells all of the same background colour with transparent borders and rules? See this web page for examples: http://www.gui.com.au/resources/coding_standards_print.htm#Variables (page down a bit to see them).

I want to do this without having to specify the background colour of each cell individually. --Kwhitefoot 11:11, 29 September 2005 (UTC)Reply

Yes, that's a tough one because there is no "cellborder" directive for the table style. You can play with the BORDER and RULE attributes of table, but it seems that you cannot rely upon your browser to interpret all of this stuff the way you want it.
I think the easiest way to write this is using wiki table notation with a different background for the table and for each row.
{|style="background:white"
|- style="background:lightgrey;"
| abc || def ||ghi
|- style="background:lightgrey;"
| jkl || mno || pqr
|}
abc def ghi
jkl mno pqr
--SV Resolution(Talk) 13:36, 29 September 2005 (UTC)Reply
Neat compromise, thanks. --Kwhitefoot 12:44, 30 September 2005 (UTC)Reply


Literal pipe / syntax whine edit

Question: How do you get a literal pipe into a table? Do I have to resort to the unicode reference for it?

Also, I'd like to second, third or generally n the nonintuitivenes of the table syntax. I have never been able to construct a table without typing something that doesn't work, googling for this wiki, then re-saving the page a dozen times looking at what it did (and I have a few recreational mediawikis - I just avoid tables). I'd almost rather have html; at least its tree structure is, well, structural, if verbose and a little ambiguous with more than one system for styling.

<nowiki>|</nowiki>.--Patrick 00:24, 7 November 2005 (UTC)Reply
What about if we want pipes to work with internal links inside tables? 69.124.143.230 02:36, 11 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
{{!}} John Reid 15:22, 8 October 2006 (UTC)Reply

Expanding a table vertically edit

How do you make a td fully expand to fit its container, minus the margins? I thought having a margin of, say, .5 em would expand the td to the full size of its parent container, but doing so hasn't worked here. I'm not sure why. What am I doing wrong? - ElAmericano 15:27, 15 November 2005 (UTC)Reply


Wiki Headers inside tables edit

http://www.wowwiki.com/WoWWiki:Community_Portal demonstrates how a wiki was able to generate wiki headers inside a table. I've looked at the code carefully, and I cannot determine how they were able to instruct the wiki interpreter to convert the == == code to be a header.

This is what happens on wikimedia and on my own wiki.

== level 2 header ==

I would like to be able to use the wiki headers so that the templates I'm generating can be used in other pages as contributors to the table of contents. --67.180.119.165 16:46, 16 December 2005 (UTC)Reply

Help with centering using class="wikitable" edit

Using the pipe syntax, how do I set a few but not all columns in a class="wikitable" table to be centered without having to add (multiple instances of) style="text-align: center" on each row?
Thanks and apologies in advance if I've missed the obvious. David Kernow 19:24, 1 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

I believe that's the only way. There's something like a "column group" that you can do advanced stuff with, but I don't understand it.[2]Omegatron 06:06, 26 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

trouble with rowspan edit

I want to create a table that looks roughly like this:

before 1 a a and b after
before 2 b and c
before 3 c after

only I want the before column to be rowspan = 3 instead of 3 separate entries. I tried:

{| class="wikitable" border="1"
|- height="12"
|rowspan="3"|before
|a
|rowspan="2"|a and b after
|- height="12"
|rowspan="2"|b and c
|- height="12"
|c after
|}

and this is what I get:

before a a and b after
b and c
c after

The middle row is getting only about one pixel or so. Can I give it a minimum height without specifying an exact height? In html, the height attribute seems to be a minimum height (from what I've read in a web search -- I'm not a html table expert), but it doesn't seem to have any effect. Am I doing something wrong? 24.206.178.76 05:36, 7 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

This test uses regular html table tags:
Beforeaa and b after
b and c
c after

As you can see, the result is the same. In order for the three rows to be differentiable, you must have at least one column which is not spanned with another row. - Amgine / talk meta 05:46, 7 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

I wasn't using height properly -- I noticed how someone above asked about a blank row, and copied from that, to get this:
{| class="wikitable" border="1"
|- 
|rowspan="3"|before
|a
|rowspan="2"|a and b after
|- style="height:20px"
|rowspan="2"|b and c
|- 
|c after
|}
before a a and b after
b and c
c after

It doesn't resize properly as the text changes size, but it's something. Does anyone know if I can specify row height in units of text height (or otherwise make it resize properly)? 24.206.178.76 01:03, 8 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

Spacing after a nested table. edit

Ok, I'm working on a article for the swedish gaming wiki, I'm trying to make a table for game of the year, but in the bottom of the table, there's a odd spacing. How can I get rid of that. See the table below (The colors are just for testing, they are not supposed to be that when I'm done).

IMAGE
Årets: Vinnare:
Musik x
Manus x
FPS x
Äventyr x

Edit: Ok, this is very odd, in the preview, it looks odd, but in the posted change, the table looks good. However, I noted that I had the last tag missing. Might be the problem, still dosen't explain why it works in the article and not the edit. --Hipshot 18:46, 12 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

optional table row with template qif edit

Hi, I'd like to make a template of a table, similar to the infobox of chemical element, like Chlorine. What I need is to make almost every row optional in the template. So I imitate the style of the chemical element infobox, which is actually a set of templates, where each template is a row. It does the job, but I'm not completely satisfied. This method does not guarantee the ordering of the rows. Anyone can switch them.

So I'm wondering if there is a way to make a row optional in a big, multi-row template, using qif to test whether or not a template variable exists? --Chochopk 06:02, 18 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

Color section edit

How does one change the link font color? - RoyBoy 18:29, 26 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

wikitable? edit

Where can I find some documentation of the class="wikitable" syntax? (Not the general "pipe" syntax).--66.183.170.41 16:04, 2 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Good question. I'm interested to know too, especially as regards tweaking it (e.g. to make some – but not all – columns centered). David Kernow 06:42, 3 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
Looks like the documentation is near the bottom of the Table help page here. David Kernow 10:39, 5 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
Oops, sorry. We need an admin to add it to the site css. I guess no one has it on their watchlist. I'll look for an admin. — Omegatron 15:48, 5 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
It's been updated. — Omegatron 01:38, 27 February 2006 (UTC)Reply


Go to Class_and_Style_Notes for a style sheet entry for Wikitable. Regards, WPhyundai, 3-7-8

Convert to wikitable edit

Why isn't the table in section #Comparison a Wikitable? Isn't Wikitables sifficient? / 83.227.55.189 16:20, 8 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Convert to wikitable edit

mmm. isnt this wildly too complicated for the average user? I mean there must be at least a couple of meters of explanation to make what is probably one of the commonest items on a web page apart from the text, somebody needs to develop an interface for table creation....

Yes, it certainly is. See en:Wikipedia:Proposal for Table: namespace and intuitive table editor for my proposal. — Omegatron 01:39, 27 February 2006 (UTC)Reply


taxobox edit

I wondering how do you do taxobox like at wikipedia?

mine: http://cybercheetah.elwiki.com/

thanks,

Mitternacht.

Style Classes edit

Where should the css style be defined to be possible to use it like class="wikitable"? I can't even find the wikitable class...

thanks, kungfuPT

The wikitable class is part of the common.css file. You can find it at MediaWiki:Common.css. (It took me a long time to hunt it down, too.) --Stormraven 13:38, 10 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
Sorry about that. :-) — Omegatron 02:52, 12 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
Which doesn't answer the original question, though, which is "where do you put new css styles that you want to use?" 202.49.72.33

Pipe Passing edit

What if we're trying to pass a pipe character through a template variable, while inside a table? The table always ends the cell before the text after the pipe, and doesn't bother passing the rest of the line to the template. 69.124.143.230 02:17, 11 March 2006 (UTC)Reply

Still nothing? 128.122.253.228 17:16, 20 March 2006 (UTC)Reply

| inside tables? edit

How can i display the character | inside a table?

If you want a literal pipe character " | " inside the table, just use "<nowiki>|</nowiki>". But if you want to know how to use pipes in piped links inside tables, well then I'd like to know the same. (though you said "display" so I'm pretty sure you mean the former) 69.124.143.230 03:36, 13 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, that helped. 80.144.114.118 13:19, 13 March 2006 (UTC)Reply

Encourage editors to use class="wikitable" edit

I think that Wikipedia's guide to creating tables should encourage editors to use class="wikitable" in all their tables. The non-CSS tables given in the first examples simply look old fashioned and are cluttered with extra lines or borders or 3D effects that detract from the content. The CSS tables are much cleaner, clearer and generally look more professional. --217.161.104.2 12:19, 16 March 2006 (UTC)Reply

I'd rather just make that style the default for the entire site, and use a class for the exceptions that need a more plain style. — Omegatron 00:38, 18 March 2006 (UTC)Reply

How to colspan a column title? edit

I'm trying to make a column span for 3 columns, how do I do it?

this is what I'm trying to do:

| Column Title |

| Column1 | C2 | C3 |

those three colums are below the title.

Thanks. hope I'm clear :\ 200.56.169.243 04:01, 19 March 2006 (UTC)Reply


This should work:
|colspan=3| Column Title |
...or, using the bold+centered heading format:
!colspan=3| Column Title !
Testing, testing:
Column Title another title
Column Title
Column1 C2 C3 C4
Best wishes, David Kernow 04:11, 19 March 2006 (UTC)Reply
      • hi David, thanks A LOT!!!

200.56.169.243 07:46, 20 March 2006 (UTC)Reply

background:inherit? edit

Doesn't seem to work (at least with Netscape 8):

{| style="background:inherit;"
|- 
| abc
| def
| ghi
|- style="color:green;"
| jkl
| mno
| pqr
|-
| stu
| style="bgcolor:inherit;" | vwx
| yz
|}

gives

abc def ghi
jkl mno pqr
stu vwx yz

Which shows up as a white-background table on a light grey page...

Urhixidur 14:50, 21 March 2006 (UTC)Reply

Note also "background:inherit" does not work with IE6 or (I presume) earlier. However, "background:none" is understood by IE6, and may be useful (eg., with borderless tables). Cheers, CWC(talk) 08:21, 29 April 2006 (UTC)Reply

I just noticed that the help page said to use "background:inherit" (woops!). I've boldly changed it to say to use "background:none" instead. Cheers, CWC(talk) 11:58, 17 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

There was a long discussion about none vs. transparent some days ago in w:Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). IIRC none resets both background colour and image, while transparent resets only the colour. If that's related to your observation, you could simply remove the obscure inherit, it appears to be the opposite of what you really want. -- Omniplex (w:t) 01:43, 18 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

transparent image inside table edit

I'd greatly appreciate any help with this. I'm trying to enforce the transparency of the image in the wikitable at en:Template:ProbDistributions -- right now, it just has a gray background. Is this a problem with my PNG, my table syntax, or something else? Btyner 20:50, 29 April 2006 (UTC)Reply

Figured it out; my image had an incorrect alpha channel. Btyner 03:01, 30 April 2006 (UTC)Reply

Gallery table edit

What is the gallery section for? I don't see any application for this at all. — Omegatron 14:18, 16 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

I removed it, it is not very relevant.--Patrick 21:35, 16 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

Omniplex's edits edit

  1. The wikitable/prettytable explanation and highlighting template description was explicitly asked for by a newcomer who didn't understand it.
  2. The lorem ipsum demonstrates the floating tables. Without it, there's no point in having those examples. Removing it doesn't really help with page length at all. If you want to make the page shorter (I do too), get rid of the redundant examples, combine several related examples into one, or split it into multiple pages.
  3. I don't think we cater to legacy browsers. In general, our practice has been to follow the latest standards and users of very old browsers simply won't see certain visual stylings. We certainly shouldn't be prohibiting certain styles just because some people won't see them.

Otherwise looks good. — Omegatron 13:44, 18 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

Omegatron, the section on wikitable classes doesn't seem to have changed much from what you wrote and which I liked very much. The section entitled "Pipe syntax in terms of the HTML produced" is pretty incomprehensible to me. I don't understand what purpose that section serves. It reads like one computer guru writing to another computer guru rather than help for a newcomer like myself. - Wikipedia:User:Mbeychok 18 May, 2006
Ok, but the colored highlighting section was removed.
I agree that that section is not very good. The "HTML & Wiki-td" column is actually wrong, as far as I know. It's bad HTML, and depends on a program called Tidy fixing any such bad code in the article, and I have seen our lead developer Brion explicitly saying not to do that. — Omegatron 22:53, 18 May 2006 (UTC)Reply
  • The {{prettytable}} stuff didn't make sense on w:en:, where that template has the same effect as class="wikitable", therefore I removed it together with an off topic list of colour names and the w:Ph:Table caveat.
I like(d) the prettytable here, as far as it has any effect for old browsers, but it's an incompatible + protected dummy on w:en:, hopeless wrt the help pages. Maybe we need a separate Help:Color page (?)
  • Old browsers: Where possible the help pages should be "visible with any browser". Missing CSS-decorations are no issue, but if it breaks horribly resulting in garbage like the removed Lorem-part it's IMO not good enough for a help page - unless that's the purpose. Somewhere Patrick has noted why floating right in conjunction with monospaced text or similar cases breaks depending on the browser (and window width).
  • The page was rather long anyway - I saw too late that it was much worse before you trimmed it, because somebody asked me to look at it, maybe a race condition.
  • Removing the HTML-syntax: Good idea, please do this, HTML only offers to omit some closing tags like </td>, the XHTML vs. Wiki examples would be much better without a "third" HTML case, with a bogus "HTML + Wiki <td>" title. Omitting </td> is no Wiki feature, it's a HTML feature, and translating HTML to XHTML on the fly depends on "tidy", that's AFAIK optional for MediaWiki.
  • Lorem: If you liked it maybe reinsert + subst + truncate it, admittedly my reduction to "Lorem ipsum..." was radical. The complete Lorem was rather long and confusing, because the nowiki-code parts had only "Lorem ipsum...", different from the corresaponding "what you get" parts. -- Omniplex (w:t) 21:00, 22 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

Styles ;wikitable, prettytable, infobox and other edit

Where can I get whole list of styles. Which are pecularities of use these, where are examples?--Albedo 22:33, 18 July 2006 (UTC)Reply

I don't think there is one, but there should be. wikitable and prettytable are the same thing. — Omegatron 16:56, 19 July 2006 (UTC)Reply
OK. So are there another styles of table? Or who can show links to it?--Albedo 19:55, 19 July 2006 (UTC)Reply
I have been searching for this too. As far as I can tell, the canonical list is in the form of CSS code in MediaWiki:Common.css, on a per-wiki basis. That is, depending on what MediaWiki site you are on, the MediaWiki:Common.css file may define different style classes; by default, the page appears to be blank, i.e., it defines no style classes until someone edits the page. This will be a problem if you set up your own MediaWiki site and attempt to use the wikitable, prettytable, infobox, etc. styles. Since ordinary (non-admin) users cannot edit the Common.css page, they have to request edits to it. See for example: MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Wikitable class and MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Infobox class. Help:Table#Style classes is not as clear as it could be about its assumption that the reader is on Wikipedia or one of the well-developed Wikimedia sites. Users who are on another less-developed MediaWiki site won't have these style classes until an admin user adds them. Also see: Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Catalogue of CSS classes for an attempt to list what people have added to Wikipedia. Teratornis 18:18, 19 December 2006 (UTC)Reply

Anchors inside Tables edit

When using wiki-style tables, how would I put anchors inside a cell (so that I can link directly to a specific row)?
This   method doesn't work...

{|
| <a name="A" /> A
|-
| Anton, Arnold, Archie, ...
|-
| <a name="B" /> A
|-
| Bob, Bill, Betty, ...
|}

Element "a" is not allowed, use e.g. "span".--Patrick 00:47, 26 July 2006 (UTC)Reply

Table background colors edit

I haven't found a documentation of the color specification syntax like in

  • style="background: #AABBCC;"

but by experimenting I found that AA, BB, and CC in the above example represent hex digits that give the brightness of the red, green, and blue components, respectively, thereby enabling 256 levels per component, or 16,777,216 different colors. I found it helpful to assemble a systematic table of a few hundred colors, which I'm going to use in different wikipedia tables:

Note: when the two hex digits of each red/green/blue component are equal, you can strip one of these digits to use a RGB color code on 3 digits only instead of 6.
So #AABBCC is the same as #ABC (most contents on Wikipedia will not need more precision for enhancing the user interface; 256 values or more per RGB color component is only for photos with soft variation of shades).
and probably you should also reduce these colors with only 6 and the 16 possible hex digits: 0; 3; 6; 9; C; or F (this gives the 216 colors of the default web palette usable on 256-color displays).
Note that your palette below forgot the plain colors (using 00 and FF pairs of hex digits).
To compact the code of this table in this talk page, I also replaced background styles by equivalent bgcolor attributes; and I finally added the 0 and F single-hex values (equivalent to 00 and FF hex pairs). verdy_p (talk) 01:01, 29 April 2014 (UTC)Reply
000 200 400 600 800 A00 C00 E00 F00 002 202 402 602 802 A02 C02 E02 F02 004 204 404 604 804 A04 C04 E04 F04
020 220 420 620 820 A20 C20 E20 F20 022 222 422 622 822 A22 C22 E22 F22 024 224 424 624 824 A24 C24 E24 F24
040 240 440 640 840 A40 C40 E40 F40 042 242 442 642 842 A42 C42 E42 F42 044 244 444 644 844 A44 C44 E44 F44
060 260 460 660 860 A60 C60 E60 F60 062 262 462 662 862 A62 C62 E62 F62 064 264 464 664 864 A64 C64 E64 F64
080 280 480 680 880 A80 C80 E80 F80 082 282 482 682 882 A82 C82 E82 F82 084 284 484 684 884 A84 C84 E84 F84
0A0 2A0 4A0 6A0 8A0 AA0 CA0 EA0 FA0 0A2 2A2 4A2 6A2 8A2 AA2 CA2 EA2 FA2 0A4 2A4 4A4 6A4 8A4 AA4 CA4 EA4 FA4
0C0 2C0 4C0 6C0 8C0 AC0 CC0 EC0 FC0 0C2 2C2 4C2 6C2 8C2 AC2 CC2 EC2 FC2 0C4 2C4 4C4 6C4 8C4 AC4 CC4 EC4 FC4
0E0 2E0 4E0 6E0 8E0 AE0 CE0 EE0 FE0 0E2 2E2 4E2 6E2 8E2 AE2 CE2 EE2 FE2 0E4 2E4 4E4 6E4 8E4 AE4 CE4 EE4 FE4
0F0 2F0 4F0 6F0 8F0 AF0 CF0 EE0 FF0 0F2 2F2 4F2 6F2 8F2 AF2 CF2 EE2 FF2 0F4 2F4 4F4 6F4 8F4 AF4 CF4 EE4 FF4
006 206 406 606 806 A06 C06 E06 F06 008 208 408 608 808 A08 C08 E08 F08 00A 20A 40A 60A 80A A0A C0A E0A F0A
026 226 426 626 826 A26 C26 E26 F26 028 228 428 628 828 A28 C28 E28 F28 02A 22A 42A 62A 82A A2A C2A E2A F2A
046 246 446 646 846 A46 C46 E46 F46 048 248 448 648 848 A48 C48 E48 F48 04A 24A 44A 64A 84A A4A C4A E4A F4A
066 266 466 666 866 A66 C66 E66 F66 068 268 468 668 868 A68 C68 E68 F68 06A 26A 46A 66A 86A A6A C6A E6A F6A
086 286 486 686 886 A86 C86 E86 F86 088 288 488 688 888 A88 C88 E88 F88 08A 28A 48A 68A 88A A8A C8A E8A F8A
0A6 2A6 4A6 6A6 8A6 AA6 CA6 EA6 FA6 0A8 2A8 4A8 6A8 8A8 AA8 CA8 EA8 FA8 0AA 2AA 4AA 6AA 8AA AAA CAA EAA FAA
0C6 2C6 4C6 6C6 8C6 AC6 CC6 EC6 FC6 0C8 2C8 4C8 6C8 8C8 AC8 CC8 EC8 FC8 0CA 2CA 4CA 6CA 8CA ACA CCA ECA FCA
0E6 2E6 4E6 6E6 8E6 AE6 CE6 EE6 FE6 0E8 2E8 4E8 6E8 8E8 AE8 CE8 EE8 FE8 0EA 2EA 4EA 6EA 8EA AEA CEA EEA FEA
0E6 2F6 4F6 6F6 8F6 AE6 CE6 EE6 FF6 0E8 2F8 4F8 6F8 8F8 AE8 CE8 EE8 FF8 0EA 2FA 4FA 6FA 8FA AEA CEA EEA FFA
00C 20C 40C 60C 80C A0C C0C E0C F0C 00E 20E 40E 60E 80E A0E C0E E0E F0E 00F 20F 40F 60F 80F A0F C0F E0F F0F
02C 22C 42C 62C 82C A2C C2C E2C F2C 02E 22E 42E 62E 82E A2E C2E E2E F2E 02F 22F 42F 62F 82F A2F C2F E2F F2F
04C 24C 44C 64C 84C A4C C4C E4C F4C 04E 24E 44E 64E 84E A4E C4E E4E F4E 04F 24F 44F 64F 84F A4F C4F E4F F4F
06C 26C 46C 66C 86C A6C C6C E6C F6C 06E 26E 46E 66E 86E A6E C6E E6E F6E 06F 26F 46F 66F 86F A6F C6F E6F F6F
08C 28C 48C 68C 88C A8C C8C E8C F8C 08E 28E 48E 68E 88E A8E C8E E8E F8E 08F 28F 48F 68F 88F A8F C8F E8F F8F
0AC 2AC 4AC 6AC 8AC AAC CAC EAC FAC 0AE 2AE 4AE 6AE 8AE AAE CAE EAE FAE 0AF 2AF 4AF 6AF 8AF AAF CAF EAF FAF
0CC 2CC 4CC 6CC 8CC ACC CCC ECC FCC 0CE 2CE 4CE 6CE 8CE ACE CCE ECE FCE 0CF 2CF 4CF 6CF 8CF ACF CCF ECF FCF
0EC 2EC 4EC 6EC 8EC AEC CEC EEC FEC 0EE 2EE 4EE 6EE 8EE AEE CEE EEE FEE 0EF 2EF 4EF 6EF 8EF AEF CEF EEF FEF
0FC 2FC 4FC 6FC 8FC AFC CFC EFC FFC 0FE 2FE 4FE 6FE 8FE AFE CFE EFE FFE 0FF 2FF 4FF 6FF 8FF AFF CFF EFF FFF

--Ratzer 07:37, 16 August 2006 (UTC)Reply

See also w:Web colors.--Patrick 08:26, 16 August 2006 (UTC)Reply

Table issues on my wiki edit

Hi, I'm having an issue getting tables from infoboxes to display correctly on my wiki. I've imported all the CSS, the parser, and as many other items as I can find to try to fix this problem. Apparently I'm overlooking something. The tables in the templates appear to be funcitoning correctly, but the article looks broken.

Please assist. Thanks --20.4.38.68 23:13, 2 October 2006 (UTC)Reply

http://wiki.3400z24.com/index.php?title=GM_60-Degree_V6_engine

Table codes Summary edit

It would be nice to have a summary about this page. Then I don't have to scan through masses of texts in this page. Kassie 11:35, 22 October 2006 (UTC)Reply

I think it would be even better to see where the list of all of the currently possible style choices. This is helpful, but, as it says in the title, the most commonly used. Maybe they are the only commonly used ones because people don't know of the other ones (if any) available. 69.182.165.163 18:39, 24 September 2010 (UTC)Reply

row numbering & splitting edit

I want to make a table. As the data increased, it grows beyond viewable screen area and when I scroll it down, the header is not visible and when I want to know which field a data belong to, I must scroll it up to see the header. I don't want to add header manually every N rows because it can break sorting. Is it possible to split table automatically every N rows, may be some additional tags?

I also find it difficult to count the rows as it increases. Is it also possible to add row number in the left automatically? --Umarsaid 08:00, 13 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Toolbar extension? edit

Q. Where i can find the extension for the toolbar, so i get the table edit buttons pictured in chapter 1?

A. It's custom made, see the last comment on this page: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/mediawiki/86354

"This is done using JavaScript and is not part of the MediaWiki software. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.js for one"

Lwh 20:03, 28 August 2007 (UTC)Reply

Please Elaborate on Use of the Wikitable Class edit

I just created a website using MediaWiki 1.9.3. When I use class="wikitable", however, my tables don't look at all similar to the ones shown in this article. Is it necessary to do some additional configuration to enable the wikitable class?

In a related question, is it possible to achieve the wikitable format (thin gray lines, shading, etc.) without the class="wikitable" instruction? I've been trying to use "style" instructions, but I can't find the right syntax. I'd be grateful if someone would post an example.

Class wikitable is defined in MediaWiki:Common.css. To have it applied for all tables, I think you have to remove each occurrence of ".wikitable".--Patrick 09:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

style command syntax reference? edit

Can someone point me to a comprehensive reference that gives all the valid entries for the style command used in table syntax? I've been searching and searching and I can't find it. I'm not talking about making a style sheet, I'm talking about a reference that will describe all the stuff you can do in the style="" line within a table. --70.18.50.189 01:20, 2 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

It's the same as style attribute in html tags, so you should google some css guide. Few of the css rules are banned. — Nikerabbit 08:57, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Regards, WPhyundai, 3-7-8

strange table behaviour with table cell including কৣ  edit

Hi, Column 6 in the table below, taken from [3] is absurdly wide in both Opera and FF. Any ideas why that is?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
ɭ̣ː कॣ কৣ  - - - - - - - - - -

194.109.22.149 16:25, 6 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Working up a new example for decimal alignment edit

{| class="wikitable"
|style="text-align:right;padding-right:0;border-right:hidden"|432||style="padding-left:0"|.1
|-
|style="text-align:right;padding-right:0;border-right:hidden"|43||style="padding-left:0"|.21
|-
|style="text-align:right;padding-right:0;border-right:hidden"|4||style="padding-left:0"|.321
|}
432 .1
43 .21
4 .321

Such code could probably be placed in a template if anyone seriously wanted to use it. Can anyone think of any improvements? --Random832 04:10, 3 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Try without "class=wikitable":

432 .1
43 .21
4 .321

Looks the same as the original, but with more complicated code. What is the difference/advantage?--Patrick 11:39, 3 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Um, the advantage is that it works with class=wikitable. the original doesn't work with tables with borders at all. --69.136.185.145 23:25, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Alignment of Columns edit

I have a table with 6 columns. How I can do first, second and sixth columns left-aligned and third, fourth and fifth columns right-aligned?--Ahonc 21:44, 10 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

how to stop aligned table stacking? edit

I have some tables I want to have right-aligned below each other. But when there's not enough text to force some space between them, they stack towards the left, rather than being below each other on the right margin. ie.

Table code appears between this sentence and the next.

cell cell
cell cell
cell cell

this is paragraph text describing the first table. But not enough to occupy the height of the table. The second table code appears after this sentence.

cell2 cell2
cell2 cell2
cell2 cell2

I want this second table below the first, rather than stacked. How do I do this? My table code is

{| class="wikitable" align="right"
|-
| cell || cell
|-
| cell || cell
|-
| cell || cell
|}

60.240.113.86 08:38, 1 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

You can use template:- ( talk edit history links ).--Patrick 09:55, 1 July 2007 (UTC)Reply
Awesome, thank you. 60.240.113.86 13:49, 1 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

HTML Table is "May not have browser support in future"??? edit

How is it so and more than the other two (XHTML and wiki)? I wanted to delete it or add a Template:Fact but that template is not supported here.24.136.74.52 15:45, 25 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

Width of table edit

For layout reasons many authors prefer to set the width of the whole table to 100%. On higher screen resoltutions (especially on wide screens) this results quite frequently in overlapping with other tables or pictures. Example: [4]

Is this a known bug and is there a workaround?

Greetings Rosentod --146.107.43.107 11:24, 30 August 2007 (UTC)Reply

Use of links in tables edit

This page seems to be missing any discussion of the use of links in tables which has resulted in a disagreement in there usage within Wikipedia, specificly article The Smashing Pumpkins where MOS is being applies to avoid linking all entries but the MOS statement "More than 10% of the words are contained in links;" is being rightly ignored. Where does one get to the point that a chart is so heavly link that it is better to link every cell rather than simply leave a few cells unlink for the sole purpose of complying with:

"A link for any single term is excessively repeated in the same article, as in the example of overlinking that follows: "Excessive" is more than once for the same term, in a line or a paragraph, because in this case one or more duplicate links will almost certainly appear needlessly on the viewer's screen. Remember, the purpose of links is to direct the reader to a new spot at the point(s) where the reader is most likely to take a temporary detour due to needing more information;"

And in my POV, fail to comply with the section in bold by actually diverting the viewer attention to the unlinked section. Also noting that MOS states: "These guidelines also apply to tables," but fails to address the unique differences in charts that make overlinking (more than 10%) necessary.

Please note that this is not being posted here to simply deal with a dispute in Wikipedia (that needs to be addressed in Wikipedia itself) but rather to deal with the general need for better coverage on how to use links within tables and specificly what rules do or do not apply to tables; obviously the 10% rule does not apply, but that should be addressed.

Example:

Date of release Title Record label
May 28, 1991 Gish Caroline Records
July 27, 1993 Siamese Dream Virgin Records
October 24, 1995 Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness Virgin Records
June 2, 1998 Adore Virgin Records
February 29, 2000 Machina/The Machines of God Virgin Records
September 5, 2000 Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music Constantinople Records
July 10, 2007 Zeitgeist Reprise Records

Note: this example indicates broken links due to the fact that it references the English Wikipedia name space, but it makes the same point. The three duplicate unlinked items stand out. The following is a link to the chart in Wikipedia: Chart example

Submitted by:Dbiel - English Wikipedia 24.180.20.32 12:38, 15 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Often tables are sortable. At least in that case all occurrences of a term need to be linked, since it varies which is the first.--Patrick (talk) 00:30, 16 October 2007 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for the reply, though it does not fully address the question. Additionally what is the policy as related to linking repetitive dates? In this case 2000 The whole issue of linking in tables is sadly missing or better said under-addressed with statements like These guidelines also apply to tables, yet clearly some of the guidelines just do not apply. Submitted by:Dbiel - English Wikipedia 24.180.21.38 11:30, 16 October 2007 (UTC)Reply
Linking of dates is also done for formatting according to the preferences set, and therefore done regardless of repetition.--Patrick (talk) 00:55, 17 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

You don't need to link dates for sorting. You should rather use a hidden sortkey instead. --146.107.43.107 13:06, 31 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

I meant that if you would normally want to link the first occurrence, you need to link all, since due to sorting it varies which is the first.--Patrick (talk) 14:24, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

Default Sorting edit

Hello everyone. I am involved in a wiki project for a game.

Something I have yet to find out:

Is it possible to have tables sort by default?

That is, can class="wikitable sortable" tables default to a certain sort pattern such as "column 3, ascending order" ?

-Claytonius3 18:01, 3 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

Source edit

I would add information about how to include the source reference (i.e. in a data table). --193.145.201.52 12:20, 12 December 2007 (UTC)Reply

CSS style background-image not working inside cell style edit

Inside a cell the style parameter seems not to accept the parenthesis in background-image:url(/path/to/image.png);. See sample code:

{| border="1" 
| style="background-image:url(head.jpg); width:300px;" | fooo...
| style="width:100px;" align="right" | working style
|}

Here is the table:

fooo... working style

I tried using a template (like the {{!}}) and tried using &#40; and &#41;. Do I see/do something wrong? How could I solve this? Didn't find anything in the docs or discussions yet...

background-image is not accepted as a style attribute, at least on Wikimedia projects. -AlexSm 14:57, 14 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

Changing attributes of an entire column edit

Is there a way to change an attribute, such as text size, of an entire column without having to change the attribute of every single cell in the column? --Liface 08:45, 3 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

No! It is a common matter in programming languages; rows are handled but columns are not.

Regards, WPhyundai, 3-7-8

Collapsible Table Missing edit

A very good page! A short mention of how to collapse a table would be more complete. ie:

{|class="prettytable collapsible collapsed"
!Always displayed header
|-
|Initially hidden text.
|}

gets you this:

Regards, WPHyundai, 3-7-8 ,(Sorry, no account on this Project).

It is noted that some Wiki projects do not have support for collapsible tables, so it might be to avoid confusion that they do not mention it in the main Help page.
Omitting any mention of it also sows confusion. If a caveat exists, then simply mention it as well. 76.252.32.231 01:55, 17 August 2008 (UTC)Reply

That page has wide generality and might suffer as a result. Numnuts, 6-7-8

Seems to me a section explaining it could be added with a 'Note: Not all wiki projects support collapsible tables. Please refer to your project's table/help page.'

-71.237.130.223 05:11, 21 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

Introduce Class wikitable to my own wiki edit

Hello there. I'd like to use the Class wikitable or prettytable in my own wiki, so I copied the necessary parts from common.css into the common.css (in /skins/common) of my wiki. What else needs to be done to make it work, though, since any changes in my common.css don't affect the looks of my wiki at all - any hints? Additionally I just found out, the there is of course a common.css-file in the \mediawiki-1.12.0\skins\common directory, but if I look at "../myWiki/index.php/MediaWiki:Common.css", it is entirely empty. Since I'm new to this kind of technology I'm definitely confused now, where or "to which" common.css do I need to make changes which will affect my Wiki? Help, please. Thanks. --Leothrin 11:59, 15 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

Hi again. As it is I found a part of the answer as soon as I asked here: Apparently the only changes that affect the behaviour (e.g. collapsible tables) and looks (e.g. css-classes prettytable/wikitable) of your own mediawiki are those that are made to the ".../mywiki/MediaWiki:Common.js" and ".../mywiki/MediaWiki:Common.css" and for that you'd need sysop rights. Since I have those on my own little mediawiki things work okay now, BUT - what are those files common.css and common.js for then which you'd find in ".../mywiki/skins/common"? What is their purpose? --Leothrin 11:59, 15 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

Wikitable autofilter edit

I suggest adding an "autofilter" class for tables, inspired by common spreadsheet applications and the excellent "sortable" class.

To demonstrate the usefulness of such a feature, See the comparison of web frameworks table. It is so large, I cannot use the table sensibly. However, I don't think the table should be split. What I really want is to be able to filter the contents of the table based on one or two of the columns and then sort by a second column.

What do you think?

--Jcarroll 15:29, 31 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

Applying m:Help:Sorting#Secondary_sortkey may be sufficient.--Patrick (talk) 23:49, 31 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

Wikitable - Infobox interference edit

Does anyone know how to keep infoboxes from bumping down wikitables? Here is an example of what I am talking about. I have tried changing all kinds of parameters (width of table, etc.) in the past and not gotten anywhere. Any help is appreciated. 70.152.181.8 09:34, 3 January 2009 (UTC)Reply

Square Monitors section = delete? edit

The section just pains me. It contains no useful advice for creating tables, it has the obvious advice of using a square browser window, but it also advocates using pixel measurements without really going in depth how differet resolutions of these square monitors (e.g. on handheld devices) would affect the look of content formatted this way -- using a "thumb" without pixel specs would at least give a user on a smaller or bigger screen the option of using his or preferences to achieve a tolerable display. And the statement that tables for wide devices can't work on square ones is just plain wrong, because most table columns will wrap their content to fit the width, unless, of course, it is full of images like these. In fact, to display a bunch of images, the use of thumb images without table formatting would be best, because it allows the images to "float" around to fill the available width on the page.

I don't even see a way to rewrite this advice to have it make sense, so, delete? --84.128.205.92 09:59, 22 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Yes, yes, yes! Someone please kill off that awful incoherent section. Also, move all the other gunk about image sizing to a specialized Help:Images in tables. -- skierpage 23:18, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Problem viewing table with Firefox 3.5.1 edit

When viewed using the Firefox browser (3.5.1), the following table has missing horizontal bars under 2,3,4,5,6 and 7.
Also the verticle bars go down too far. On the other hand using the Opera or IE browsers it looks fine:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
0 1
1 0 1

Help!

Pnelnik 00:01, 20 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
0 1              
1 0 1            
The problem has to do with "undefined" cells —Roguebfl 19:49, 30 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Columns to rows and rows to columns edit

Is there a means of toggling rows to columns and visa versa? Ukr-Trident 17:00, 24 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Artifact Help edit

This is a test 1234567890

I'm having trouble getting rid of the apparently extra cell on my middle row prevent the background from reaching all the way across to match the boarder of the tob and bottom cell.—Roguebfl 19:39, 30 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

This is a test 1234567890
found the problem the example code wasn't original written for tables —Roguebfl 17:46, 31 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Needs update edit

Hi. This help page should be updated according to en:Wikipedia:Manual of Style (accessibility)#Data tables. Tables headers should be made using "! scope=col |" and "! scope=row |", instead of only "!". The scope attribute tells the browser and en:screen reader that everything under the column is related to the header at the top, and everything to the right of the row header is related to that header. It's a straightforward concept. Yours, Dodoïste (talk) 11:17, 28 July 2010 (UTC)Reply

Fixed width columns edit

The way the page explains to set column width (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Table#Setting_your_column_widths) seem to simply set the MAX width. That is, if the contents of the column does not need that much space, the column will shrink. Is it possible to do something so that the column is always the same width no matter what the contens are? Daviddoria 19:51, 10 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Those columns do not shrink for me (tested in the latest Opera 10.60, some old FireFox and IE6). -AlexSm 04:21, 11 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

lining several tables edit

Here you see a very long table: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_Athletics_World_Records It would be better to have it split into many tables, but that would result in all tables being different. See this example on the Dutch wiki: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wereldrecords_atletiek That is very ugly (I am a typographer you know). Is there a way to make this OK? I can give them the same width-settings, but tables with width percentages specified behave different from common tables. Common tables in a narrow window will break sentences in a cell into different lines, but when width is specified they don't. And as you can see in the first example, it is a wide table and so on smaller screens or narrow windows a bit nasty. Weia 13:35, 22 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

How do I make a table with square cells… edit

…if the width of my cells are fixed in a percentage ? Thing is, I want to use 100% of the page with the table, and have only square cells, so I fixed the width of every cell in percentage as well. Is it possible to just tell the wiki to make height and width equal ? thanks in advance. 109.128.208.168 23:37, 22 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

interdiction on use of Float positioning disputed edit

The article has had the following sentence since rev 174389 by User:Darrien at 08:34, 8 July 2005:

"Do not, under any circumstances, use "float" to position a table. It will break page rendering at large font sizes."

I dispute this, and would like to see this sentence removed. (In fact, there are advantages to using float positioning including allowing use of cascading floats.)

I tried zooming a test page containing a float:right info box to truly Brobdingnagian proportions and it worked perfectly fine without any negative side effects that I could see.

In looking for a source for this, Omniplex above says:

Somewhere Patrick has noted why floating right in conjunction with monospaced text or similar cases breaks depending on the browser (and window width).

If there was ever a reason in the days of Geocities and Netscape to have this remark, I doubt it's true any more. If you believe this sentence should remain, please provide an example of it breaking a page.

(I'm rarely here, so if the consensus is agreement, someone please be my guest and make the change.) Mathglot 21:19, 3 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

I removed it.--Patrick (talk) 22:59, 3 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

Is it possible to adjust font size within a table? edit

I am making a table and the default font for the wiki is a bit large for the table to look good. I was wondering if there was a way to make the font inside the table a certain size. currently it is a 20pt font and i just need to make it a 16pt.

Table width in Mobile View edit

cell

The table expands to the whole page width in Mobile View. Is there a way to disable this effect?

The culprit is the mobile stylesheet:

  .content table 
 { 
 margin: 1em 0; 
 /* following 4 rules are needed for scrolling */ 
 overflow: auto; 
 /* for browsers that don't support overflow-y */ 
 overflow-y: hidden; overflow-x: auto; display: block; width: 100% !important; } 

I am not sure what the designer of the stylesheet had in mind; I suspect the delaration is clueless. The following declarations are needed to revert this insanity:

cell

Is bugzilla:64516

--Yecril (talk) 18:17, 27 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

I also agree but the worse is not the forced table width (which breaks lots of things, notably in tables containing tables side by side that will not overflow in the horizontal direction and needlessly scroll in that direction or will overflow in the margins of some container: horizontal scrolling is very bad for navigation when a single vertical direction of scrolling is much easier and more accessible).
The worse is the display:block that simply breaks the basic rendering of tables; breaking the table layout for things like cell borders; or column autosizing.
Even on mobiles, all of them will only support as the best option the vertical scrolling (there's no easy way to scroll horizontally).
Finally the overflow-y:hidden is supposed to reverse the scroll direction but there are lots of contents that will be truncated at the bottom and made inaccessible : lots of tables are much taller than wide, as they frequently contain many rows for just a few columns.
If these CSS styes are needed for some specific mobile working only in landscape mode (most smartphones or used in portait mode; notably when editing due to the vertical space used by the on-screen keyboard and the fact htat these keyboards necessarily use almost all the available width...), then a better detection of these devices should be used and the device tracked specifically (here this is not indicated at all; may be it works on a specific unknown device but it breaks almost all others).
verdy_p (talk) 01:05, 28 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

Help resizing table edit

Hi, I'm having trouble resizing [[5]] using the following code but the columns resize automatically regardless how I set the width manually.

"{|class="wikitable sortable" ! scope="col" width="40px" | Name"

I'm trying to shrink the columns to allow the images to straddle on the right of the table, as in this similar page [[6]]

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Mattximus (talk) 18:06, 9 May 2015 (UTC)Reply

@Mattximus: Try something like style="max-width:40px" if they are becoming bigger than you set. That said, don't overly force widths and formatting in such places. Remember that everyone's right margin will be different depending on their viewing platform, and settings. Keep it simple.  — billinghurst sDrewth 11:23, 10 May 2015 (UTC)Reply

Three simple tools for tables edit

I use commonly three extremely simple, but useful tools to write tables/to transform OCR in wiki tables:

  • a tableMaker tool, that converts into wikitable code the text resulting from copy-and-paste from Excel (it finds \t and \n charaters as cell and row separators)
  • a "append" tool, that re-builds rows from columns of values (OCR often outputs tables as sequences of columns);
  • a different "appendr" tool, really simple, that rebuilds rows when OCR outputs tables as "columns of row values".

Here some example. This simple table comes from a copy-and-paste from Excel:

1	5	9	13
2	6	10	14
3	7	11	15
4	8	12	16

Just selecting and clicking tableMaker this is the result:

{|
|-
|1||5||9||13
|-
|2||6||10||14
|-
|3||7||11||15
|-
|4||8||12||16
|}

OCR could output the table as one of these two sequences:

1		1
2		5
3		9
4		13
5		2
6		6
7		10
8		14
9		3
10		7
11		11
12		15
13		4
14		8
15		12
16		16

In both cases, append and appendr put the cell values in the right place to be used by tableMaker. --Alex brollo (talk) 15:17, 2 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

#ifeq adds extra spaces edit

I'm having problem with creating tables using

#ifeq

However, it creates extra space for every skipped entry. Is there any way to get rid of the extra space

Actual code:

{{#ifeq:{{#ifeq:{{{InputName|}}}|ALL|show|{{#ifeq:{{{InputName|}}}|{{{Name|}}}|show|hide}}}}|show|
{{{!}}align="center" style="min-width:650px;text-align:center; background: #028ABD; border: 3px ridge #f8cf3f; border-radius:7px; clear:both; font-size:75%; font-family:verdana;"
{{!}}-
{{!}}
{{{!}}width=100% cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 min-width:100px
{{#if:{{{Image{{!}}}}}|!style="background:#000"{{!}}{{{Image}}}|!style="background:#000"}}
{{!}}
{{{!}}class="customtable DW3Rookie" width="100%"
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f; min-width:100px">Name</span>
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f; min-width:100px">JPN</span> 
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f; min-width:50px">HP</span>
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f; min-width:50px">MP</span>
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f; min-width:20px">EXP</span>
{{!}}-
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:100px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{Name}}}</span>
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:100px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{JPN}}}</span>
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:50px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{HP}}}</span>
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:50px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{MP}}}</span>
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:20px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{EXP}}}</span>
{{!}}}
{{{!}}class="customtable DW3Rookie" width="100%"
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f">Strength</span>
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f">Defense</span>
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f">Spirit</span>
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f">Wisdom</span>
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f">Speed</span>
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f">Charisma</span>
{{!}}-
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:80px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{Strength}}}</span> 
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:80px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{Defense}}}</span> 
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:80px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{Spirit}}}</span> 
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:80px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{Wisdom}}}</span>
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:80px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{Speed}}}</span>
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:80px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{Charisma}}}</span>
{{!}}}
{{!}}}
{{{!}}class="customtable DW3Rookie" width="100%"
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f">Tolerance</span>
{{!}}}
{{{!}}class="customtable DW3Rookie" width="100%"
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f">Fire</span>
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f">Water</span>
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f">Ice</span>
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f">Wind</span>
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f">Thunder</span>
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f">Machine</span>
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f">Dark</span>
{{!}}-
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:80px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{Fire}}}</span>
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:80px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{Water}}}</span>
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:80px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{Ice}}}</span>
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:80px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{Wind}}}</span>
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:80px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{Thunder}}}</span>
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:80px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{Machine}}}</span>
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:80px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{Dark}}}</span>
{{!}}}
{{{!}}class="customtable DW3Rookie" width="100%"
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f">PSN</span>
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:80px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{PSN}}}</span>
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f">PAR</span>
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:80px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{PAR}}}</span>
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f">CNF</span>
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:80px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{CNF}}}</span>
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f">SLP</span>
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:80px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{SLP}}}</span>
!<span style="color:#f8cf3f">K.O</span>
{{!}}style="background:#000; min-width:80px"{{!}} <span style="color:white">{{{K.O}}}</span>
{{!}}}
{{!}}-
{{!}}}
|}}

--Q-orca (talk) 02:40, 25 November 2015 (UTC)Reply

time to html5 our instructions and remove deprecated examples edit

With alignment for html5 becoming (more) important, especially for our developers, it is probably time for us to look to update our formatting examples to CSS and html5 compliant formatting and remove deprecated forms.  — billinghurst sDrewth 00:18, 25 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

Combined rowspanning edit

Following is from the foreside. I made it a little more simple by reducing a row and a column.

Column 1 Column 2 Column 3
A B
C D
E F
G
H
Column 1 Column 2
A B
C
E F
G
Column 1 Column 2
A B
C
E F
G

What do I have to change to make C spanning row down into F and besides E? Is there any difference in the result (rows & columns) using "wikitable"? --Tommes (talk) 01:32, 16 October 2016 (UTC)Reply

Rotate text in table edit

How do I rotate text in a table?

When I use Template:Transform the row height and column width are incorrect.

Override text alignment in a wikitable edit

I'm trying to keep all text in a column in my table aligned left, but the table itself has been preset to align all text to center, through the use of this code:

{|class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center;"

How do I override this alignment rule so that everything in the last column can be aligned left? — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Fitriamirrol (talk)

At this point you cannot align text by column, you would need to apply that per cell. So either remove the style that text-align the whole table, or force each required cell with style="text-align:left;"  — billinghurst sDrewth 23:52, 27 August 2017 (UTC)Reply

How to write a rowspan that fills all rows, no matter the number? edit

I have a Table Template with a variable number of rows. I need one of the columns to ALWAYS take up all the rows from top to bottom, no matter how many rows may be added. It's like a sidebar, I guess. Any ideas? I wish I could just write rowspan="all" but that obviously doesn't work. Thanks. 23.17.183.4 03:29, 18 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Wait never mind, you can just set it to "99" and it will fill enough. Hope this info helps someone else. 23.17.183.4 03:36, 18 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

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