Question

I see this post on highlighting even columns but can I highlight only selected columns?

Here is the code they use:

$("table.Table22 > tbody > tr > td:nth-child(even)").css("background","blue");

But I would like: NOTE: the class="highlight" will be on the selected columns, so if I selected column 3 the class="highlight" would be removed from column 2 and added to column 3. jQuery needs to add the class based on selected column.

<table class="tbl">
    <tr>
        <th class="firstColumn">
            Cell 1:Heading
        </th>
        <th class="highlight">
            Selected column so this should be highlighted
        </th>
        <th>
            Cell 3:Heading
        </th>
        <th>
            Cell 4:Heading
        </th>
        <th>
            Cell 5:Heading
        </th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>
            Cell 1:Row 1
        </td>
        <td class="highlight">
            Selected column so this should be highlighted
        </td>
        <td>
            Cell 3:Row 1
        </td>
        <td>
            Cell 4:Row 1
        </td>
        <td>
            Cell 5:Row 1
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>
            Cell 1:Row 2
        </td>
        <td class="highlight">
            Selected column so this should be highlighted
        </td>
        <td>
            Cell 3:Row 2
        </td>
        <td>
            Cell 4:Row 2
        </td>
        <td>
            Cell 5:Row 2
        </td>
    </tr>
</table>

Answer 1

You might want to take a look at jQuery tableHover plugin to achieve this. Then use something like this

$('table.tbl').tableHover({
    colClass: 'hover', 
    clickClass: 'click', 
    headCols: true, 
    footCols: true 
}); 

EDIT:

Something like this?

Working Demo – Click on any cell, to highlight the column

Code from demo –

$(function() {
  var rows = $('table.tbl tr');  

  rows.children().click(function() {

    rows.children().removeClass('highlight');  
    var index = $(this).prevAll().length;  
    rows.find(':nth-child(' + (index + 1) + ')').addClass('highlight');

  });
});