lucy24 - 9:46 pm on Jan 22, 2012 (gmt 0)

You are in luck, because background color is one of the very few attributes you are allowed to apply to a column. Most aspects of tables work strictly by row.

Sometimes you will need to experiment to see whether you want

tr.special {blahblah}
or
tr.special td {blahblah}

[w3.org...]

(Yes, alt, I double-checked that I'm going to the 2.1 spec ;))