Created attachment 239501 [details] Empty table cells in Webkit Nightly (r174423) After upgrading to Safari 7.1 on OSX 10.9.5 and iOS 8.0 recently, I noticed that the table CSS property "empty-cells: show;" was apparently being ignored where it wasn't previously. I don't recall noticing any issues with Safari 7.0.x or iOS 7.x, but I'm not 100% sure on that. I checked the latest Webkit Nightly (r174423), and it exhibited the same issue. The latest versions of Chrome and Firefox render empty table cells properly with "empty-cells: show;", but the latest Safari/Webkit versions do not. Toggling the "empty-cells: show;" CSS property in Web Inspector has no visible effect at all. I've attached screen shots of a table with empty cells in the latest WebKit and in the latest Chrome. I tried to narrow down where the regression took place by downloading progressively older versions of Webkit Nightly. I got as far as SVN r166355 (late March 2014), and the bug was there. If you go a couple weeks earlier than that, Webkit Night just crashes on 10.9.5 and if you go a couple months earlier than that and launching Webkit Nightly only presents a dialog saying that OS X 10.9 is not supported.
Created attachment 239502 [details] Empty table cells in Chrome 38.0.2125.101 (rendered properly)
Created attachment 257468 [details] Minimal test case Minimal test case for "empty-cells: show;" regression. I just tested the latest WebKit Nightly (r187289), and this bug is *still* an issue.
Interesting (to me, at least) observation: If you specify <!DOCTYPE html>, then the CSS "empty-cells: show;" works. If you specify any other DOCTYPE or no DOCTYPE, it doesn't. I guess this is some change to the quirks mode? I still consider this to be a regression because "empty-cells: show;" worked in WebKit/Safari long before WebKit ever supported HTML 5.
Correction: HTML 4.01 strict also works. 4.01 Transitional does not, however. "empty-cells: show" does not work if you have no DOCTYPE at all or with HTML 4.01 Transitional. It used to work prior to Safari 7.1.
According to my tests, this regression has been fixed in the recent Safari 10 release and is also fixed in the Safari Technology Preview. It took about 2 years, but I'm glad to see it resolved. I do wish somebody had commented on this bug besides me in that time though.