Table HELL: IE vs. Netscape

John W. Cunningham

unread,

Mar 3, 1998, 3:00:00 AM3/3/98

to

I noticed something recently:

Netscape's idea of pixel size is much different from Internet
Explorer's, when it comes to tables. And for once, I like IE's a lot
better. Here's what I saw:

When I started re-designing Financial Aid, we decided to go with a
vertical bacground along the left side of the screen. This is pretty
easy, and normally all you have to do is make a table with the first
element going the entire length of the document and being just wider
than the meaty part of the background. Since the background is a pile
of coins, it would be difficult to write anything on it anyway. So
every page starts out with a table, and the first element is 120
pixels wide (the background being about 100, this seemed wise). Also,
every page ended with the closing of all said elements...

Now here's the fun part. The same page, with the same code and
graphics, viewed my IE would have plenty of space, almost too much.
When viewed by Netscape, however, the same page would bleed onto the
background, making the words unreadable.

As far as I know, have fixed all the pages so they are readable. But
the width difference is amazing. I had to use cellspacing and
cellpadding to get the result without pushing the entire page over 200
pixels. Check it out at http://faid.tamu.edu/newweb/.

Does anybody know how this happens? Or if there is a simpler
solution?

Gerrit Leonard Van Dijken

unread,

Mar 3, 1998, 3:00:00 AM3/3/98

to

Yeah, what I ended up doing once was putting a transparent one-pixel gif
with width=100 in the first column. That worked for me.

Gert

Jeffrey W. Baker

unread,

Mar 4, 1998, 3:00:00 AM3/4/98

to

One more thing. It is interesting to see how this page
(http://faid.tamu.edu/newweb/) performs with IE 4.0 vs. NN 3.04. IE's
direct-draw advantage is obvious. Scrolling with NN produces an
unwatchable jerking motion, while IE scrolls the page quickly and
without flicker.

To short-circuit the usual flames, I have a pretty nice box for a
PeeCee (300 MHz@75x4 P-II, SDRAM, 8MB Millenium II PCI).

Jeffrey.

On Wed, 04 Mar 1998 02:28:52 GMT, j...@tamu.edu (Jeffrey W. Baker)
wrote:

>Bobo,
>
>The user agent is free to render empty cells any way it likes, even if
>there is an absolute size set. For consistency, put   into every
>empty cell to make it non-empty.
>
>Also, you should use only matching pairs of <td></td> and <tr></tr>.
>A quick scan of your source shows that you have not done this. While
>not strictly required, if you try to do nested tables, you will run
>into trouble without using matching pairs.
>
>Good luck,
>Jeffrey

Jeffrey W. Baker

unread,

Mar 4, 1998, 3:00:00 AM3/4/98

to

John BigDog Cunningham

unread,

Mar 6, 1998, 3:00:00 AM3/6/98

to

Thanks for the help. I put a 4x4 pixel transparent gif and stretched
it the appropriate amount, which worked in almost all the pages. For
some reason, one of the pure-text pages was bitchy about it, but I
shoehorned it in. Much smoother now. Thanks again,

-John

__________________________
John "BigDog" Cunningham
big...@slamdesigns.com
http://www.slamdesigns.com