[thelist] How important is height when using tables?

[noah]

Johnson, Christopher (MTO) wrote (29/07/2004 2:37 PM):

> Just a quick question that I have been wondering about for the last few
> days. When design a site using tables for the layout, how important is it to
> state a table and/or cell height? Is there any speed gained in telling the
> browser the height of a cell versus not when it comes to rendering a table?
> Is there underlying reason to leave the height attribute off when working
> with tables?

(These are just opinions, and not based on any hard data. Also, it's 
been a while since I've done a table-based layout. However . . .)

Assuming that you mean a table that only contains pieces of a sliced 
image, I'd say an explicit height is probably not that important. The 
difference in rendering time would be tiny, I think, since the browser 
will know how big to make each cell as soon as it encounters the height 
attribute in the image tag, which comes very shortly after the height 
attribute on the td would.

The best reason I can think of for not using an explicit height is that 
it provides an unnecessary opportunity for you to make an error and 
break the layout.

Cheers,
Noah