Basics
For controlling "cellpadding" in CSS, you can simply use padding on table cells. E.g. for 10px of "cellpadding":
td {
padding: 10px;
}
For "cellspacing", you can apply the border-spacing CSS property to your table. E.g. for 10px of "cellspacing":
table {
border-spacing: 10px;
border-collapse: separate;
}
This property will even allow separate horizontal and vertical spacing, something you couldn't do with old-school "cellspacing".
Issues in IE ≤ 7
This will work in almost all popular browsers except for Internet Explorer up through Internet Explorer 7, where you're almost out of luck. I say "almost" because these browsers still support the border-collapse property, which merges the borders of adjoining table cells. If you're trying to eliminate cellspacing (that is, cellspacing="0") then border-collapse:collapse should have the same effect: no space between table cells. This support is buggy, though, as it does not override an existing cellspacing HTML attribute on the table element.
In short: for non-Internet Explorer 5-7 browsers, border-spacing handles you. For Internet Explorer, if your situation is just right (you want 0 cellspacing and your table doesn't have it defined already), you can use border-collapse:collapse.
table {
border-spacing: 0;
border-collapse: collapse;
}
Note: For a great overview of CSS properties that one can apply to tables and for which browsers, see this fantastic Quirksmode page.
Either use a semi-transparent PNG or SVG image or use CSS:
background-color: rgba(255, 0, 0, 0.5);
Here's an article from css3.info, Opacity, RGBA and compromise (2007-06-03).
<p style="background-color: rgba(255, 0, 0, 0.5);">
<span>Hello, World!</span>
</p>
Best Solution
Open the page in firefox. However, first, download the firebug extension. Then, right click on the offending version and go down to inspect element.
Firebug is awesome because it let's you navigate the css of any element. You have two options here:
1) Assign the topmost element an css class and work it that way. or If that's not an option, you can use firebug to get the xpath to the offending element. Xpaths look like body/table/tr/td/table/tr[2]
what you want to do with that in css is
Option 1 is definitely the better pick. Option 2 is more of a dirty way of getting things done when things like asp.net doesn't let us have the fine grain of control we want.
It would be really awesome if you used a pastebin and posted the link to your rendered page's html.