How do you keep two tables' column widths in sync while resizing?

css, dom, html, javascript

Solution

Definitely doable in just CSS. Just set widths on both tables, trs, and tds, apply word-wrapping, and setting table-layout to fixed. This last setting makes it use the defined column widths, rather than be determined by the cell content's width.

#tb1 {     width: 80%;     }

#tb2 {     width: 80%;     }

#tb1 tr {     width: 100%;     }

#tb2 tr {     width: 100%;     }

.col1 {     width: 35%;     }
.col2 {     width: 35%;     }
.col3 {     width: 20%;     }
.col4 {     width: 10%;     }

#tb1, #tb2 {     table-layout: fixed;     }
#tb1 td, #tb2 td {     word-wrap: break-word;     }

<table id="tb1" border="1">
  <tr>
    <td class="col1">Title 1</td>
    <td class="col2">Title 2</td>
    <td class="col3">Title 3</td>
    <td class="col4">Title 4</td>
  </tr>
</table>

<table id="tb2" border="1">
  <tr>
    <td class="col1">Content 00001</td>
    <td class="col2">Content 02</td>
    <td class="col3">Content 0000000000003</td>
    <td class="col4">Content 000000000000000000004</td>
  </tr>
</table>

Problem

I've looked around a bit and can't seem to find a decent solution, that doesn't require some crazy JavaScript, to the following problem. There are two separate tables in the example. The first one is just for the headers. The second is for the body. We need two tables because the requirement for this feature is that the body table be locally scrollable, meaning the headers need to remain visible as the table body scrolls. We cannot use any new fancy HTML 5 pivot tables because we have to support IE. Is there a way to accomplish this with pure CSS? It doesn't have to be perfect, just as long as it looks decent that's all I need.

Original source