Tables: Alternating TD BGcolors

[digitalchaos]

Tables: Alternating TD background colors

Hello. I am attempting to create a table in which the background color of its data cells alternates between 2 colors; specifically the effect created here. Currently I simply use the <TD bgcolor=""> Tag attribute, but I want to make it automatically alternate the colors upon creation of new Data cells so I can add links anywhere within my alphabetical list, and not have to change the attributes every time I modify the list; that can become time consuming. Additionaly, I have other tables within my site that I do not want altered at all. How might I go about this? Can it be done with CSS, even though I only want to affect some tables? Thanks in advance for any information..

[filburt1]

I don't believe there is a way to do this with pure CSS/HTML (remember they're not programming or even scripting languages). Your best bet would be to do something like

$colorswitch = 1;
$firstaltcolor = "#EEEEEE";
$secondaltcolor = "#FFFFFF";

function createtdbgcolor()
{
    $colorswitch = !$colorswitch;
    return ($colorswitch ? $firstaltcolor : $secondaltcolor);
} 

Then, every time you want to make a td (this assumes one td per tr):

<td bgcolor="<? echo createtdbgcolor(); ?>">...</td>

[digitalchaos]

Thanks!

By any chance, would that snippet work even if the page extension was .html? Thanks.

[filburt1]

Nope, it has to be .php.

[energizze]

you could do the same with javascript.

which would be within a html page.

[filburt1]

...but remember not all browsers work the same or even support Javascript

Each to his own