Overflow:hidden doesnt work with percentages

Hi guys

Several months ago i discovered an unpleasant issue: when you set overflow
to hidden (or other values different from visible) on an element such as
div or td which height is given in percentages overflow doesn't work. It
is very inconvenient. For example i tried to make such a simple list: items
are represented with tables (float:left,clear:right,width:1px) contained
within a div (overflow:hidden;width:200px;height:100%). Each time overflow
occures the
div breaks all the layout 'caz its height goes out of 100% of its
parent. All modern browsers behaive as i described.
Even if content of an element is wider than its parent and the parent's
width is set to some length (not percentages) overflow doesnt
work. I found a workaround but I use javascript . I hope this problem will
disapper when CSS3 is adopted.

Serj I