'div' inside 'table'

Question

Is a div inside a table allowed or not according to W3C?

Have you looked in the specification, or tried it out in the validator? — RoToRa, Jun 04 '10 at 13:37

score 43 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 28 '14 at 14:37

43

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
  <head>
    <title>test</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <table>
      <tr>
        <td>
          <div>content</div>
        </td>
      </tr>
    </table>
  </body>
</html>

This document was successfully checked as XHTML 1.0 Transitional!

edited Apr 28 '14 at 14:37

AJ Meyghani

4,389
1
31
35

answered Jun 04 '10 at 13:37

echox

9,726
6
33
51

score 39 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 04 '10 at 13:38

39

You can't put a div directly inside a table, like this:

<!-- INVALID -->
<table>
  <div>
    Hello World
  </div>
</table>

Putting a div inside a td or th element is fine, however:

<!-- VALID -->
<table>
  <tr>
    <td>
      <div>
        Hello World
      </div>
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>

answered Jun 04 '10 at 13:38

Pär Wieslander

28,374
7
55
54

1

u didnt mention =P – agent provocateur Aug 04 '15 at 22:21
@ I don't think you can use a `div` directly inside a `tr` as well – Yuvraj Jaiswal Mar 18 '18 at 16:34

score 19 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 14 '21 at 20:37

19

You can put div tags inside a td tag, but not directly inside a table or tr tag.

Examples:

This works:

<table>
  <tr>
    <td>
      <div>This will work.</div>
    </td>
  </tr>
<table>

This does not work:

<table>
  <tr>
    <div> this does not work. </div>
  </tr>
</table>

Nor does this work:

<table>
  <div> this does not work. </div>
</table>

edited Aug 14 '21 at 20:37

Peter Mortensen

30,738
21
105
131

answered Jun 04 '10 at 13:36

Paul

2,729
20
26

This solution works, but it seems that when , "div", elements are used as children of, "td", elements, the specified width and height of the, "div", is ignored. – SuperSim135 Mar 13 '21 at 03:44
Re *"does not work"*: Can you be more specific? What happens? – Peter Mortensen Aug 14 '21 at 20:37

score 9 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 04 '10 at 13:50

While you can, as others have noted here, put a DIV inside a TD (not as a direct child of TABLE), I strongly advise against using a DIV as a child of a TD. Unless, of course, you're a fan of headaches.

There is little to be gained and a whole lot to be lost, as there are many cross-browser discrepancies regarding how widths, margins, borders, etc., are handled when you combine the two. I can't tell you how many times I've had to clean up that kind of markup for clients because they were having trouble getting their HTML to display correctly in this or that browser.

Then again, if you're not fussy about how things look, disregard this advice.

score 2 · Answer 5 · edited Aug 14 '21 at 20:35

2

It is allowed as TD can contain inline and block lements.

Here you can find it in the reference: http://xhtml.com/en/xhtml/reference/td/#td-contains

edited Aug 14 '21 at 20:35

Peter Mortensen

30,738
21
105
131

answered Jun 04 '10 at 13:36

2ndkauboy

9,302
3
31
65

The is (effectively) broken: *"This webpage was generated by the domain owner using Sedo Domain Parking."* – Peter Mortensen Aug 14 '21 at 20:36

'div' inside 'table'

5 Answers5

Linked