[thelist] Table weirdness, unwanted spaces in cells

[Elfur Logadottir]

From: "aardvark" <roselli at earthlink.net>

| > the error: cells are displayed wider than defined.
|
| this often happens when there is no reason for a cell to restrict its
| width... for the short term, try testing it with a row of spacer.gifs in
| exactly the sizing you need... see if that tightens it up...

thanks aardie,
but, i have spacer gifs, and every cell is at least it's assigned width -
my problem is that two cells in the top row are *larger* than they are
supposed to and are therefor enlarging the total width of the table - those
two cells are not taking space from other cells, just adding to the total
width of the table.

What appears to be happening has something to do with using long
non-wrapable code combined with colspan.
It looks as if the non-wrapable code, such as a long word or a wide image,
is restricted by the width of *one* of two cells in a colspan, rather than
the combined width of both cells in the colspan.

Does it make sense? hell no, but since my code validates as XHTML
transitional *and* i'm using spacer.gifs *and* the problem disappears if I
remove the suspicious (sic!) parts - it's the only thing i can think of.
of course my problem is that removing those parts breaks the design.

| i'd love to deconstruct it and really look into it, but i'm a bit
| swamped right now...

thanks anyway,
(praying that someone else has a clue ...)

*the puzzled one*
elfur.is || elfur.com