How to get a table border separate from the cell border.

I'm trying to get all my table cells to have a 1px silver border, and the table itself to have a 1px black border. I don't care whether the black border replaces the silver square around the table, or whether it sits outside that square. I just can't get either to work. Not without lots of code, anyway.

Here's the HTML:

<table> 
 <tr><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td></tr> 
 <tr><td>4</td><td>5</td><td>6</td></tr> 
 <tr><td>7</td><td>8</td><td>9</td></tr> 
</table>

This gets me the separate black border, but the cell borders are then doubled to 2px:

<style type=text/css> 
table {border:1px solid black; border-spacing:0px} 
td {border:1px solid silver; padding:10px} 
</style>

Adding "border-collapse:collapse" to the table makes the cell borders 1px as they should be, but then the black border disappears.

Curiously, the border-collapse version works if I change the cell border style to "dotted". In that case the black border magically appears. But then I'm stuck with a dotted border, and dotted borders are for losers. I can't get this to work with solid borders.

What's the simplest way to achieve a separate table border from solid cell borders, all of which are 1px?

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
  "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html lang="en">
<head>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<meta name="language" content="english"> 
<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css">

<title>double border</title>

<style type="text/css">
table {
   border:1px double #000;
   border-collapse:collapse;
  } 
td {
   padding:10px;
   border:1px solid #c0c0c0; 
  } 
</style>

</head>
<body>

<table><tr>
 <td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td>
</tr><tr>
 <td>4</td><td>5</td><td>6</td>
</tr> <tr>
 <td>7</td><td>8</td><td>9</td>
</tr></table>

</body>
</html>

How to get a table border separate from the cell border.

while using border-collapse?

MichaelBluejay

rainborick

lucy24

birdbrain

MichaelBluejay

birdbrain

MichaelBluejay

birdbrain

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