Tobias says:

Dear Manntis and Dear Mark,

(I’ll just answer both of your comments in this one, as you are refering to the same topic, I hope that is ok.)

I’m sorry to hear that you are having such trouble with CSS styling of tables and are getting frustrated with the plugin. I definitely appreciate your honesty on what needs improvement on this website. I know that the documentation is not very helpful in its current form.
At the same time I’m a little bit shocked about your demands.

As you (hopefully) see from my activity on this website in answering comments, in the WordPress support forums in replying to support inquiries, and in many emails a day (well, ok, you can’t see that), I’ll always and gladly help with any questions and problems regarding the plugin and the styling, often even within minutes after I receive the question! Meanwhile I try to add improvements and new features to the plugin on a regular basis (just checkout the Google Code repository timeline).
And I do this as a hobby, only in my free time! During the day I’m actually a full time student and I also have a personal life. I do the work on this plugin completely voluntarily and for fun. I do not get paid for it and can not live from it. The plugin is open source and I do not demand anything in return.

Now, you complain that this and that on the site is bad or not there. Again, this is not a commercial software project, for which you pay money and where you definitely have a right to a good and easy to understand documentation.
In contrast this is Free Software, so please don’t put the same standards on it. I don’t get anything for it, so don’t demand the same service. While it fits the needs of most people who use it, it should be clear that this is not necessarily the case for every website. I will certainly do my best to fit more and more needs and make the plugin easy to use and understandable (which is the answer to Manntis’ question on why the plugin has that border and the colors in the first place). I try to give hints and help to do customisations in the documentation and on the plugin’s page. For me, this is hard, time-consuming and kind of tedious work (I admit). While I probably know the details of the plugin, I don’t know the details of what people want to do with it. Thus it is hard for me to write down specifics on how to do things.

It is also hard to add specific examples as they will not necessarily work on every page (because of the many, many themes out there that also mess with the CSS) (which is the answer to Manntis’ question on why code I post does not help). There are just so many factors that might break that code on a specific page.
I do acknowledge the need for examples though and I’ll definitely try to add some, but neither can I promise what they are nor when this will happen. Again, this is a hobby for me and I do the work in my free time without any compensation! I do like your suggestions though!

Now a few words regarding CSS:
My plugin generates valid HTML code for tables, just like if it were typed manually or created with a table generator. Thus, every CSS command out there can be used on the tables. Additionally, the plugin adds several CSS classes to the tables that can and do make styling easier (and those classes are documented in the documentation)!
Now, CSS is such a large topic that I obviously can not (and do not want to) cover every aspect of it and will certainly not write another “Introduction to CSS”. I also can not provide the means of learning CSS here. And that’s where I’m caught between the devil and the deep blue sea: If I add examples, those obviously would require at least some background and understanding on CSS (like what are selectors, what are properties and what are values). So they are not really useful to people without that knowledge. But they also are not really helpful to people who have that knowledge, because they will know the properties to use by themselves and just need the selectors (which they can get from the documentation and the table’s HTML source).

As a first step though, I have started to create a “Frequently Asked Questions” sections (before both of your comments!) where I’ll try to answer exactly such questions and problems. I’ll also try to extend the documentation to contain more helpful information. I’ll also try to reduce redundancies and thus am thankful for telling me about that circle between documentation and plugin page. I can’t yet say when this will happen, because I also don’t want the actual plugin development grind to a halt. I’m currently working on two (hopefully) great features that have been widely asked for (more on that in a blog post tomorrow). I hope you understand that.

Ok, finally some hints on how to solve your specific CSS needs:
Manntis: Especially the removing of borders is theme-dependent (and not too easy because of small problem within the plugin that I could not find a good solution yet, due to maintaining backward compatibility).
Please try this: add the parameter cellspacing="0" to your Shortcode, i.e. replace [table id=N /] with [table id=N cellspacing="0" /]. This should remove that border.
Mark: This also applies to your table border. Additionaly you should uncheck the “Alternating Row Colors” checkbox in the options for that table, which will remove the background colors of the rows.
Then try this CSS (needs to be add to the textarea in the “Plugin Options”:

.wp-table-reloaded-id-2 td {
  text-align: center;
  font-size: 14px;
  padding: 2px;
  color: #ff0000;
}
.wp-table-reloaded-id-2 td a:hover {
  color: #00ff00;
}

Colors and sizes need to be adjusted of course.
I hope this satisfies your client (from which you probably get money, but I don’t).

To sum up: I’m really thankful for your honest words on what’s missing, but don’t agree to the way you communicated it. I’m not angry because of this, I just want you to understand why some of the things are how they are. Some parts of this text might sound rude or unfriendly to you. If that is the case, I apologize, as it is not the intention I have with this post. I further hope that I actually understood your comments and did not interpret to much (maybe something you weren’t saying) into it. I greatly appreciate that you are using the plugin.

I hope the hints at the end are helpful to you. Please don’t hesitate and feel free to ask with any specific problems.

Best wishes and Merry Christmas to you and your families!
Sincerely,
Tobias