html - CSS-Only Scrollable Table with fixed headers

Question

This question already has answers here:

Answer 1

This answer will be used as a placeholder for the not fully supported position: sticky and will be updated over time. It is currently advised to not use the native implementation of this in a production environment.

See this for the current support: https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-sticky

---

Use of position: sticky

An alternative answer would be using position: sticky. As described by W3C:

A stickily positioned box is positioned similarly to a relatively positioned box, but the offset is computed with reference to the nearest ancestor with a scrolling box, or the viewport if no ancestor has a scrolling box.

This described exactly the behavior of a relative static header. It would be easy to assign this to the <thead> or the first <tr> HTML-tag, as this should be supported according to W3C. However, both Chrome, IE and Edge have problems assigning a sticky position property to these tags. There also seems to be no priority in solving this at the moment.

What does seem to work for a table element is assigning the sticky property to a table-cell. In this case the <th> cells.

Because a table is not a block-element that respects the static size you assign to it, it is best to use a wrapper element to define the scroll-overflow.

The code

div {
  display: inline-block;
  height: 150px;
  overflow: auto
}

table th {
  position: -webkit-sticky;
  position: sticky;
  top: 0;
}


/* == Just general styling, not relevant :) == */

table {
  border-collapse: collapse;
}

th {
  background-color: #1976D2;
  color: #fff;
}

th,
td {
  padding: 1em .5em;
}

table tr {
  color: #212121;
}

table tr:nth-child(odd) {
  background-color: #BBDEFB;
}

<div>
  <table border="0">
    <thead>
      <tr>
        <th>head1</th>
        <th>head2</th>
        <th>head3</th>
        <th>head4</th>
      </tr>
    </thead>
    <tr>
      <td>row 1, cell 1</td>
      <td>row 1, cell 2</td>
      <td>row 1, cell 2</td>
      <td>row 1, cell 2</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>row 2, cell 1</td>
      <td>row 2, cell 2</td>
      <td>row 1, cell 2</td>
      <td>row 1, cell 2</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>row 2, cell 1</td>
      <td>row 2, cell 2</td>
      <td>row 1, cell 2</td>
      <td>row 1, cell 2</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>row 2, cell 1</td>
      <td>row 2, cell 2</td>
      <td>row 1, cell 2</td>
      <td>row 1, cell 2</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>row 2, cell 1</td>
      <td>row 2, cell 2</td>
      <td>row 1, cell 2</td>
      <td>row 1, cell 2</td>
    </tr>
  </table>
</div>