A html table can be sized by providing width and height, but it can also be sized by setting heights to its rows (<tr style='height: ...'>) and widths of its columns (via colgroup).

In the latter case of setting row heights and column widths, what’s the recommended attribute for table height and width? I would expect no value should be set, because the table can work out its dimension in a “bottom up” manner (as its size is the sum of rows and columns), but that doesn’t seem to working as expected. I’ve tried width/height: auto and 100%, but those settings seem to be dependent on the parents (somewhat). I’m using a parent container to “mask” a part of the table to provide a window to see the table, so ideally parent mask and table should be independent.

If necessary, I’ll try to create a minimal example, but I was hoping someone had encountered this problem before and there’s only an attribute missing (or another simple fix).