Posted by Steve Pugh on 02/14/07 10:51

On Feb 13, 8:11 pm, "Bruce C. Miller" <bm3...@gmail.com> wrote:

> <TABLE border=1 WIDTH="100%">
> <TR>
> <TD WIDTH="1">1</TD>
> <TD WIDTH="1">2</TD>
> <TD>333</TD>
> <TD>444</TD>
> </TR>
> <TR>
> <TD COLSPAN="4">hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhffffffffffffffffffffffffffhhhhhhh</
> TD>
> </TR>
> </TABLE>
>
> If I pull that up in FF it looks like I want it to (the first and
> second columns are small), but in IE it expands those columns (it
> ignores the width=1).

As the characters "1" and "2" are almost always wider than 1px (which
is what width="1" means in this context) then both IE and FF are
ignoring the width="1" anyway, and with good reason.

> How do I tell IE to not automatically make those
> columns whatever size it wants? It seems to have something to do with
> the length of content in the COLSPAN-ed row below it, which is pretty
> stupid.

The specification tells browsers to treat cell widths as a suggestion
and to ignore them when the content doesn't fit. IE handles this by
treating cell widths as minimum widths.

It will be hard to come up with a solution without being able to see a
real page with real content. Possible solutions include,, but probably
aren't limited to,: not using tables, using table-layout: fixed;
splitting the table into two; but which one is most appropriate will
depend on the the actual content, design and structure of the page.

Steve

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