Question

The following html works as expected apart from margin-top being completely ignored by table row div. And I can’t figure out why.

<div class='table'>

  <div class='margin-top5 row user' id='user_113'>
    <div class='cell left avatar margin-right5'><img alt="Blank_avatar_thumb" src="/images/blank_avatar_thumb.png?1295354025" /></div>
    <div class='cell left'>
      <div class='bold'><a href="/voisins/113">Dandre</a></div>
      <div class='small of_hidden'>toothpicking, veryveryveryveeerrrryyyyyylooooooooong, kidnapping...</div>
    </div>
    <div class='cell right'>42</div>

    <div class='clear'></div>
  </div>
  /* more rows */
</div>

css:

div.table {
  display: table;
  width: 100%;
}
div.row {
  display: table-row;
}
div.cell {
  display: table-cell;
}
div.left {
  float: left;
}
div.right {
  float: right;
}
div.clear {
  clear: both;
}
.avatar {
  vertical-align: middle;
}
.margin-top5 {
  margin-top: 5px;
}
.margin-right5 {
  margin-right: 5px;
}
.bold {
  font-weight: bold;
}
.of_hidden {
  overflow: hidden;
}
.small {
  font-size: 0.8em;
}
body, p, ol, ul, td {
  font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
  font-size: 13px;
  line-height: 18px;
}

EDIT:

If I remove .row class from row div, it starts picking up margin-top.

Answer 1

This is the cullprit: display: table-row;
You’re telling the div to behave like a tr, tr‘s don’t have a margin… or padding.

You can apply a padding to a td, but not a margin.