Can I Make an Empty Cell's Border Visible in CSS?

In Internet Explorer 7, an empty cell's border may not appear by default. However, there are a few ways to address this issue.

Using a Non-Breaking Space

If it's feasible, inserting a non-breaking space ( ) into the empty cell can force the browser to render the cell with a border.

Pure CSS Solution

For a CSS-only solution, you may need to set the empty-cells property. In IE8, this property can be set to show to make empty cells visible.

IE7 Quirks

However, in IE7, setting empty-cells to show has no effect. In this case, it's not possible to show the border of an empty cell using pure CSS.