The empty-cells property in css establishes if the browser should or should not create borders around empty cells in tables. Internet Explorer 6 was thought to not support this property. However, if you align the CSS moons in the perfect direction, IE6 actually does recognize the empty-cells property. Here is how to do it.
Crafting CSS for IE is the one of most painful parts of a designer’s work. Sadly, a lot of big companies still use IE; thus, IE6 fixes and hacks are still required.
Currently, I am designing an application for our hospital (which still uses IE6 only). The program contains a lot of data in tables and the lack of empty-cells css support looked horrible. Here is an example of the borders not appearing around empty cells.
To workaround this problem, you must set the CSS border-collapse property of the table to collapse in your CSS as well. After this, IE6 will correctly render the empty-cells property on your TDs. Here is the most basic CSS example:
.sampletable {
border-collapse: collapse;}
.sampleTD {
empty-cells: show;}
Here is a screenshot of this method in action: