Re: table width control

>On Sun, 4 Jun 1995, Bruce Morris wrote:
>
>> You may have overlooked th use of WIDTH= attributes for tables. You can use
>> it in the <TABLE>, <TH>, or the <TD> tag and can specify absolute values or
>> percentages. You can also use a NOWRAP attribute if that is needed  - just
>> the opposite of the WIDTH attribute.

In my local copy of the HTML 3.0 draft, I cannot find a WIDTH attribute for
table cells. Unfortunately, I can't get to Dave's server to check the spec
there. Has this been added recently?

>Thank you.  But, when I try to specify a specific width, the text will
>make it grow if it is too long.  Do you mean that I CAN set a max width?
>Because I couldn't get one to work.

You can use COLSPEC to specify cell widths also. If the browser is doing its
thing correctly, the cell should only grow if there is a single word or image
that is wider than the cell width you specify. Basically the width should
be used to reset the min and max cell width (from the scanning process) so
that

  min_width = MAX(min_width,width)

and

  max_width = MIN(max_width,min_width)

>BTW, <TH> ?

Table heading. Same as TD except that the text should be rendered in boldface,
or some other such indication of a heading.

>From the sound of things, it sounds like there are browsers out there that
are not doing a good job of formatting tables to fit within the margins. Is
this the case?

Michael Johnson
Relay Technology, Inc.

Received on Monday, 5 June 1995 09:16:44 UTC