Posted by William on 01/14/07 21:50

Thanks for the explanation, I really appreciate and I guess now I
understand that "height" in this situation is the minimum height, so I
guess I'll have to go with another strategy :-)

------
William


John Hosking wrote:
> William wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I hope someone can help me. I got a problem where some table layout
>> won't work the way it's supposed to work, using rowspan.
>
> You mean it won't work the way you expect it to work.
>
>>
>
> IE is *special*.
>
> [code snipped]
>
> Your third column is meaningless, and has no effect on this behavior.
> Likewise the inner table. The width settings are also irrelevant. You've
> really got a 2x2 table, with the first column spanning two rows:
>
> ------------
> ¦ A ¦ B ¦
> ¦ ¦ ¦
> ¦ ¦-----¦
> ¦ ¦ C ¦
> ¦ ¦ ¦
> ------------
>
> You've set a suggested minimum height on cell B. (I know you said
> "height", but IE treats it as a min-height.) As the content in A grows
> in length, B starts to grow in proportion in IE (in FF, B remains
> constant).
>
> (If you test without setting a height for B, FF gives the same height
> for B that we see in IE. Suggesting that FF takes height to be a maximum
> or exact height, while IE considers it a minimum.)
>
> Another variation, this one with only one row:
>
> ------------
> ¦ A ¦ B ¦
> ¦ ¦ ¦
> ¦ ¦ ¦
> ------------
>
> You've set a suggested minimum height on cell B. As the content in A
> grows in length, B starts to grow in proportion in IE and in FF. The
> behavior of cell B in this case seems more intuitive, because we expect
> the table to contain the data more than we expect the height
> specification for B to be respected.
>
> What we're left with is merely the fact that IE (6 and below; I'm not
> testing with 7 here*) treats height as min-height, while FF treats it as
> height. Sorry. That's IE for you.
>
> A workaround? Maybe using DIVs would suit your purposes just as well (or
> better). But I don't know how to beat it reliably using a table.
>
> * I don't know if that was changed for IE7.
>

[Back to original message]