Incremental loading of tables in IE?

[Ryan Stewart]

Does IE do incremental loading of tables? I have a large table that
I'd like to display as it loads. It does in Mozilla, but not IE. Is it
not supported at all or do I need something defined besides thead,
tfoot, tbody, and colgroups?

And while I'm at it, I think I read somewhere that Mozilla doesn't
have great support for applying styles to COL elements. Are there
workarounds besides applying the styles to every td? All I really need
is a text-align: center on some columns.

 

[Mitja]

Does IE do incremental loading of tables? I have a large table that
I'd like to display as it loads. It does in Mozilla, but not IE. Is it
not supported at all or do I need something defined besides thead,
tfoot, tbody, and colgroups?

I've no idea. I'd try table-layout:fixed, but I don't know how IE reacts to
it in terms of waiting for all the contents to load.

And while I'm at it, I think I read somewhere that Mozilla doesn't
have great support for applying styles to COL elements. Are there
workarounds besides applying the styles to every td?

Applying a class is a bit better, but other than that, no.

 

[Nick Howes]

Does IE do incremental loading of tables? I have a large table that
I'd like to display as it loads. It does in Mozilla, but not IE. Is it
not supported at all or do I need something defined besides thead,
tfoot, tbody, and colgroups?

And while I'm at it, I think I read somewhere that Mozilla doesn't
have great support for applying styles to COL elements. Are there
workarounds besides applying the styles to every td? All I really need
is a text-align: center on some columns.

No, Internet explorer will only display a table when it's totally loaded.
This is especially bad when your design is built around one big table, as
the whole page will have to load before anything shows! And that's one
advantage of CSS layout. Sounds like your table is a proper table though, so
if you really wanted it to load incrementally in IE then your best bet would
be splitting it up so there's a table for every few rows... could be arduous
:S If it's server generated then it might not be too big a deal, though.

 

[Toby A Inkster]

Does IE do incremental loading of tables?

No. Use Opera instead.

 

[Ryan Stewart]

No. Use Opera instead.

Can't enforce that. Sorry.

 

[Ryan Stewart]

I've no idea. I'd try table-layout:fixed, but I don't know how IE reacts to
it in terms of waiting for all the contents to load.

I'll have to see if that's feasible as the data in the table is somewhat
variable. Looks like it may speed up the rendering one way or the other,
though. Thanks.

Applying a class is a bit better, but other than that, no.

That's what I meant. Whether I use inline styles, classes, or ID's, and
whether I apply them to COL's or COLGROUP's, Mozilla doesn't seem to pay
attention. It doesn't even appear to render align="center", which is a valid
attribute.

 

[Ryan Stewart]

No, Internet explorer will only display a table when it's totally loaded.
This is especially bad when your design is built around one big table, as
the whole page will have to load before anything shows! And that's one
advantage of CSS layout. Sounds like your table is a proper table though, so
if you really wanted it to load incrementally in IE then your best bet would
be splitting it up so there's a table for every few rows... could be arduous
:S If it's server generated then it might not be too big a deal, though.

I've barred table-based layouts from my development Unfortunately, I work
around dozens of people that look at my like I have an extra arm growing out
of my ear when I tell them that. I'm working in JSP. The table can be
anything from one row one column to (currently) about 60 rows and ...
*calculates* 720 columns. This last, while unlikely to be used often, can
produce an HTML file upward of 1M. I may go the multi-table route if I can
get them to line up properly without losing too much flexibility. Thanks for
the idea.

 

[Brian]

I think I read somewhere that Mozilla doesn't have great support
for applying styles to COL elements.

It follows the spec on that. There are only 4 properties that apply to
col.

http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1070385285&count=1

Are there workarounds besides applying the styles to every td?

None that I'm aware of.

All I really need is a text-align: center on some columns.

You can minimize the impact by choosing a default alignment for the
table using the value of the majority of columns.

 

[Ryan Stewart]

It follows the spec on that. There are only 4 properties that apply to
col.

http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1070385285&count=1


None that I'm aware of.


You can minimize the impact by choosing a default alignment for the
table using the value of the majority of columns.

That still doesn't explain why <col align="center"> doesn't work. Nor does
<colgroup align="center">.

 

[Steve Pugh]

That still doesn't explain why <col align="center"> doesn't work. Nor does
<colgroup align="center">.

This is one of those rare occasions where IE supports part of the spec
that Mozilla doesn't. It's a pain. For some tables I use styles such
as
td:first-child + td + td { text-align: center;}
to align the contents of a single column in Mozilla. But for tables
with many columns or dynamically generated tables where the alignment
of each column may not be known in advance this becomes unwieldy.

Steve

 

[Brian]

Brian wrote...


That still doesn't explain why <col align="center"> doesn't work.
Nor does <colgroup align="center">.

I imagine that Moz uses the same rules for the align attribute as it
uses for style align properties. According to its process for
presenting a document to the user, it cannot apply certain styles from
the col element.