Styling table cells in xhtml

[yacka]

I've been experimenting with various table styles, including use of the html cellspacing attribute. It appears there are basically three cell border styles:

1) Allow all the cell borders to collapse together, although this intentionally causes some borders to appear superimposed on others. Most of the time this doesn't matter but it doesn't look great if you have different color cell borders.

2) Allow all the table cells to be seperated by the default cellspacing (or border-spacing).

3) Set cellspacing to 0 to allow all borders to sit flush with no spacing.

I am focusing on IE6, which reportedly does not support border-spacing. Is it possible to get the third option without without using cellspacing? Is it ok to use cellspacing in xhtml? It validates but it doesn't feel correct.

[xhtmlcoder]

It is fine to use cellspacing and M$IE does not understand 'border-spacing'.

[yacka]

Thanks xhtmlcoder. It's a pity I can't do option 3 strictly in CSS because it makes the styling process inconsistent. I have to apply the cellspacing to each and every table rather than a single stylesheet. What a pain.