Padding Attribute for Tables and IE Problems

[Art]

I have been trying to find a solution to a problem regarding adding of
the padding attribute to an HTML table (not the cells).

I created a very simple page (both manually and via Front Page) with a
table border and padding to demonstrate the problem. The basic style
code is as follows:


table { padding:20px ; border:1px ; border-color:brown ;
border-style:solid ; background-color:gray ;}


When the page is rendered on the latest versions of browsers on MacOS X
(Safari, Firefox, SeaMonkey, IE 5.2.3), the table border and the table
padding appears as expected. However, with IE6 on Windows, the table
border is always next to the cells and the padding attribute never appears.

I am aware that IE has had issues with the box model in revisions prior
to IE6, but my understanding is that these were related to how IE
calculated the size of the box around an element (cell widths, cell
spacing, table padding and borders).

Is anyone aware of any workarounds for this ?

TIA.

Art