Damn tables will be the death of me!

[CRON]

Have a look at this page in IE:
http://www.crondesign.com/whitehall/index.php
... this is fine - the way I want it.....

Now look at this one:
http://www.crondesign.com/whitehall/collegeinfo/index.php
or even this one:
http://www.crondesign.com/whitehall/courses/

As the length of the menu in the long cell on the left increases, the
top menu cells start to ignore thier specified heights and get bigger.
Why does this happen when the other cells on the page have no height
specified?!? They should be the ones increasing! It's driving me
mental! Can someone please help me out?

Thanks a lot
Ciarán

 

[mbstevens]

Why does this happen when the other cells on the page have no height
specified?!? They should be the ones increasing! It's driving me
mental! Can someone please help me out?

A simple three column layout like yours
should not be done with tables at all.

Try modifying a template:

http://www.realworldstyle.com/
http://www.glish.com/css/
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/index.html
http://www.bluerobot.com/web/layouts/

You'll find that the columns are quite
independent of one-another.

 

[Chaddy2222]

Have a look at this page in IE:
http://www.crondesign.com/whitehall/index.php
.. this is fine - the way I want it.....

Now look at this one:
http://www.crondesign.com/whitehall/collegeinfo/index.php
or even this one:
http://www.crondesign.com/whitehall/courses/

As the length of the menu in the long cell on the left increases, the
top menu cells start to ignore thier specified heights and get bigger.
Why does this happen when the other cells on the page have no height
specified?!? They should be the ones increasing! It's driving me
mental! Can someone please help me out?

Thanks a lot
Ciarán

Hi.
You might want to view,
http://dev.wave.webaim.org/Output.j...www.crondesign.com/whitehall/courses/&md=nils
You might also want to have a look at, your page through
http://validator.w3.org
You should also be useing a Strict document type, and you should dump
the tables based layout in favor of a more moddern CSS based layout.
You also need to remember that in XHTML all tags need to be closed.

 

[CRON]

Yeah I know my coding isnt perfect - I'm not much of a purist but
that's not the problem here is it? I just wanna know what I can do to
get internet explorer to display the table the way it is told to. is
there a css tag to fix the height of a cell or something?

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Have a look at this page in IE:
http://www.crondesign.com/whitehall/index.php
.. this is fine - the way I want it.....

Now look at this one:
http://www.crondesign.com/whitehall/collegeinfo/index.php
or even this one:
http://www.crondesign.com/whitehall/courses/

As the length of the menu in the long cell on the left increases, the
top menu cells start to ignore thier specified heights and get bigger.
Why does this happen when the other cells on the page have no height
specified?!? They should be the ones increasing! It's driving me
mental! Can someone please help me out?

Forget MSIE have you viewed the site at 800x600 and less?

 

[mbstevens]

Yeah I know my coding isnt perfect - I'm not much of a purist but
that's not the problem here is it?

Actually it is, in that we can't be expected to
_first_
debug your code for you, and
_then_
answer the specific question.

Get it at least to validate and send it back for another look.

But then, if you're going to take time to do that, why not
take the time to just kill the tables completely?

 

[CRON]

Forget MSIE have you viewed the site at 800x600 and less?

Yes I have - It looks like crap. I don't care. I just want to fix the
height of the top row. I don't think its possible - Forget I asked.
I'll figure it out myself.

Cheers
Ciarán

 

[Andy Dingley]

Why does this happen when the other cells on the page have no height
specified?!?

Because you're abusing <table> for soemthing it's not intended to be
used for. Do it right, switch to a CSS-based layout. An hour or two
will web search you some good examples and convert your page over.
After that the code is also _much_ easier for you to maintain and make
further pages with.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Yes I have - It looks like crap. I don't care. I just want to fix the
height of the top row. I don't think its possible - Forget I asked.
I'll figure it out myself.

Obviously you missed my point. But then elsewhere in the thread you state:

"Yeah I know my coding isnt perfect - I'm not much of a purist but
that's not the problem here is it?"

The old saying "Garbage in, garbage out" applies here. Come back when
you are truly interested in learning how to 'fix' your problem.