Make Table Width 100% with Last Column Filling Remainder without squashing other columns content/width

Question

Is it possible to make a table (which will have dynamically created text) to have for example:

table width 100% of the screen 5 columns last column is empty ( ) the first four columns have text and their width is dynamic the last column is remainder of the width without squashing the text in the first four columns

I have this so far and it squashes the text which is what I'm trying to avoid:

<table style="width:100%;" border="1">
<tr>
    <td>One Two Three</td>
    <td>Two Three Four</td>
    <td>Three Four Five</td>
    <td>Four Five Six</td>
    <td style="width:100%;">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
</table>

I can't use "white-space: nowrap" as I do want the text to wrap if there's enough text.

Edit: "I'd just like the [first four] columns to be the width they would be if I removed the width attribute from the table tag. But still have the table be 100% of the width of the page."

Any ideas? CSS solutions preferable!

Answer 1

This is what worked for me (in FireFox, Chrome and old 12.x Opera). My tables which I wanted to have 100% width and the last column to fill the rest has the class tableList and here's CSS:

.tableList { width: 100%; }
.tableList td { width: 1px; } /* min width, actually: this causes the width to fit the content */
.tableList td:last-child { width: 100%; } /* well, it's less than 100% in the end, but this still works for me */

Below, there's a snippet to try:

.tableList { width: 100%; }
.tableList td { width: 1px; } /* min width, actually: this causes the width to fit the content */
.tableList td:last-child { width: 100%; background-color: yellow; } /* well, it's less than 100% in the end, but this still works for me */

<table class="tableList">
  <tr><td>game's</td><td>not</td><td>over</td></tr>
  <tr><td>one</td><td>two</td><td>three and more</td></tr>
</table>

Like Rahat has noticed, if the content of a column other than the first one is more than one word, it becomes multiline (one line per word):

.tableList { width: 100%; }
.tableList td { width: 1px; } /* min width, actually: this causes the width to fit the content */
.tableList td:last-child { width: 100%; background-color: yellow; } /* well, it's less than 100% in the end, but this still works for me */

<table class="tableList">
  <tr><td>game's</td><td>not</td><td>over</td></tr>
  <tr><td>one</td><td>two plus plus</td><td>three and more</td></tr>
</table>

but he also has suggested a workaround – adding white-space: nowrap:

.tableList { width: 100%; }
.tableList td { width: 1px; white-space: nowrap; } /* min width, actually: this causes the width to fit the content */
.tableList td:last-child { width: 100%; background-color: yellow; } /* well, it's less than 100% in the end, but this still works for me */

<table class="tableList">
  <tr><td>game's</td><td>not</td><td>over</td></tr>
  <tr><td>one</td><td>two plus plus</td><td>three and more</td></tr>
</table>

Answer 2

You can use flexbox to accomplish this

CSS

table {
    width:100%;
    border: 1px solid black;
    border-collapse: collapse;
}
td + td {
    border-left: 1px solid black;
}
tr {
    display: flex;
    align-items: stretch;
}
td:last-child {
    flex: 1;
    background: yellow;
    display:inline-block;
    /* to keep IE happy */
}

FIDDLE (Resize the browser window to see this in action)

table {
  width: 100%;
  border: 1px solid black;
  border-collapse: collapse;
}
td + td {
  border-left: 1px solid black;
}
td:last-child {
  background: yellow;
}

<table>
  <tr>
    <td>One Two Three</td>
    <td>Two Three Four</td>
    <td>Three Four FiveThree Four FiveThree Four FiveThree Four FiveThree Four Five</td>
    <td>Four Five Six</td>
    <td>&nbsp;f</td>
  </tr>
</table>

NB:

IE 10-11 has an issue that Inline elements (and apparently table-cells as well) are not treated as flex-items.

This issue is documented by Phillip Walton here and the workaround (from the above post) is:

This issue can be avoided by adding a non-inline display value to the items, e.g. block, inline-block, flex, etc.

---

Btw: the following is what the same fiddle above looks like without using flexbox - Notice that the last td doesn't actually fill up the remaining space, but rather takes up it's own natural space - which is what the OP did NOT want.