HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
By default, the
table-layout
property is set to
auto
, which forces the
browser to use the more time-consuming, multiple-pass layout al-
gorithm, even if you specify the widths of your columns in the table. If
your table content is variable and you cannot explicitly set the widths,
leave the
table-layout
property set to
auto
. If you can fix your column
widths and your table content is amenable, set
table-layout
to
fixed
.
8.4.10. Classification Properties
Classification properties are the most fundamental of the CSS2 style
properties. They do not directly control how a styles-conscious browser
renders HTML or XHTML elements. Instead, they tell the browser how
to classify and handle various tags and their contents as they are en-
countered.
For the most part, you should not set these properties on an element
unless you are trying to achieve a specific effect.
8.4.10.1. The display property
Every element in an HTML or XHTML document can be classified, for
display purposes, as a block item, an inline item, or a list item. Block
elements, like headings, paragraphs, tables, and lists, are formatted as
separate blocks of text, separate from their previous and following block
items. Inline items, like the physical and content-based style tags and
hyperlink anchors, are rendered within the current line of text with-
in a containing block. List items, specifically
<li>
-tagged content, are
rendered like block items, with a preceding bullet or number known as
a
marker
.
The
display
property lets you change an element's display type to
block,
inline, list-item
, or
none
. The first three values change the element's
classification accordingly; the value
none
turns off the element, prevent-
ing it and its children from being displayed in the document.
