Table cells - how make "fixed"

[Cowtoon]

FP 2003, WinXP Pro
For some strange reason, I can't seem to make a table a fixed size. What am
I doing wrong. There's an amount in the "width" and "height", however, it
publishes with a totally different width and the width changes when I resize
the IE windows. I know that this isn't what's always wanted, but for some of
what I have ... I want a fixed width.
Please help. Thanks.
Diana

 

[Murray]

Show me your code, please.

A 200px wide table or cell will ALWAYS expand when you put something 250px
wide in it.

 

[DianaH]

Sorry it took so long to post back to you Murray. I think I figured it out
.... in a my own squirelly sort of way, although it was a struggle. What I
find most awkward is when I don't pre-establish the size, there's no way to
tell what size it is. I find that frustrating. Is there a way to determine
what size a table or table cell is ... when the properties don't give a
value.
Thanks. Diana


Show me your code, please.

A 200px wide table or cell will ALWAYS expand when you put something 250px
wide in it.

 

[Ronx]

A table cell will be as big, or small, as needed to contain the data,
objects etc. within it. Even if you specify a size, this will only be
a minimum, and will be affected by adjoining cells (height by cells in
the same row, width by cells in the same column) and by the contents
of that cell.

 

[Murray]

Ron has given you the answer, but I'll expand a little on it (these are my
opinion only).

Browsers will equally divide the available space between the cells, assuming
there is equal content in the cells (in the absence of any overriding CSS).
As soon as you add "unequal" content to one of the cells, the rest of the
cells will adjust accordingly. In some cases, you can mitigate this by
explicitly dimensioning your cells, but in many cases you cannot, since the
table always has the 'last word', so to speak.

Since this is the case, trying to structure your tables by systematically
dimensioning your cells is sure to be a frustrating experience. A better
approach (in my opinion) is to think like this -

1. The overall table width is the final arbiter of the individual cell
structure. This means that the cells in aggregate for any row in a table
can never be wider than the table itself. The only time this *could* happen
would be if you put images or preformatted text into cells forcing them to
expand beyond the table's specified width. In this case, the whole table
will expand horizontally.

2. Since #1 is true, the most effective way to control your tables is to
pay critical attention to the 'shape' of that table's contents. Until the
widespread use of CSS, it was common to use transparent GIF images to prop
open key cells in a table, thereby 'enforcing' structural integrity.

Personally, when I use tables, I only use table widths, and 100% cell
widths. All the rest of my cells are undimensioned.