display:none
means that the tag in question will not appear on the page at all (although you can still interact with it through the dom). There will be no space allocated for it between the other tags.
visibility:hidden
means that unlike display:none
, the tag is not visible, but space is allocated for it on the page. The tag is rendered, it just isn't seen on the page.
For example:
test | <span style="[style-tag-value]">Appropriate style in this tag</span> | test
Replacing [style-tag-value]
with display:none
results in:
test | | test
Replacing [style-tag-value]
with visibility:hidden
results in:
test | | test
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.
Best Answer
Premising that those are two distinct properties, in your specific example there's no difference in the result, since
background
actually is a shorthand forThus, besides the
background-color
, using thebackground
shorthand you could also add one or more values without repeating any otherbackground-*
property more than once.Which one to choose is essentially up to you, but it could also depend on specific conditions of your style declarations (e.g if you need to override just the
background-color
when inheriting other relatedbackground-*
properties from a parent element, or if you need to remove all the values except thebackground-color
).