[thelist] Setting cell heights in IE

[Heather Quinn]

Make the following change:
.
.
.
<td class="content">i want this tall, remainder of page tall<br>
add more content<br>
add more content<br>
etc...</td>
.
.
.
Apparently, MS developers thought that whitespace distribution should
override a web developer's style specs/intentions when it comes to
imprecise items like rowspanned columns, and that's what's going on in
your sample, which has more whitespace than text.

The rendered text in the "content" cell your sample is "shorter" than
that in your "nav" cells.  The "nav" cells effectively have three lines
of text, while "content" has one.  Test this: increase the font size of
the "content" style about 2.5 times the size of the font you're using in
your "nav" style.  You'll find "crumbs" collapsing the way you want.

In the real world, you'll most likely have enough text, etc. in the
"content" cell so its rendered height will always exceed the rendered
height of the rowspanned "nav" cells.  But to make sure: Determine how
high your "nav" cells render by themselves, then always make sure you
have enough rendered stuff in "content" to make it same or a higher cell
size than the combined "nav" cells.  For example, if the "nav" cells
render out to about 200 px high, always keep enough text, etc. in the
"content" cell so it renders to a minimum of 200 px high, and "crumbs"
will collapse consistently.  In a pinch, you can throw in a  couple of
empty paragraphs at the end of "content".

Mike Combs wrote:

> ...IE 6 wants to make the height of each cell equal to 50% of
> the column height.
>
> Ahh... just look at the code:
> <table width="100%" border="1">
>   <tr>
>     <td rowspan="2" class="nav">
>       <p>tall nav</p>
>       <p>really tall, i mean it</p>
>       <p>hugely tall</p>
>     </td>
>     <td class="crumbs">i want this small</td>
>   </tr>
>   <tr>
>     <td class="content">i want this tall, remainder of page tall</td>
>   </tr>
> </table>
>
> ...
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> ...mike


--
Cheers,

Heather Quinn
info at windyhilldesign.com
http://www.windyhilldesign.com