I am trying to design a webpage that will have a graphic serve as the background for a table that will have weblinks and a date display in certain of the table cells. If I put &nbsp in each table cell each cell in the table remains the same size. But if I put so much as 1 character of text in any cell every cell in its column ends up much larger than the other cells and way too large for the simple text that is being displayed.

I have tried width and colspan tags in individual cells and I have tried colgroup tags for the entire table but as soon as I put text of any kind in a cell I have the same problem with the size for the cells in the column that has the cell with the text.

Can someone explain how and why text distorts the size of table cells and what I can do about it?

Have you tried setting the entire table to a specific width and height instad of individual cells?

Originally Posted by bdg1115

Have you tried setting the entire table to a specific width and height instad of individual cells?

I designed the background graphic to cover most of the browser’s display area (so I can set the background color for the entire page and have a border around the table) and then I set the table’s width at 98% of that area and used enough <tr></tr> to make the table large enough to display the entire background graphic from left to right and top to bottom.

I was not aware that you could set a table’s height, or either I used to know about it but cannot remember due to time and illness since I designed my last website back in 2003. I am having to re-learn what I once knew how to do. How do I set a table’s height? And if I set the height, how does this affect the number and height of the rows?

I used bitmap images in my last website, but I cannot make heads or tails out of the code that I wrote for it. I am hoping that I can save some time and effort by using tables.

Can someone explain how and why text distorts the size of table cells and what I can do about it?

because that's what table cells do.

Get away from tables for layout!

Can you post the URL of the site so we can have a look at the code?

Originally Posted by mcorton

Can you post the URL of the site so we can have a look at the code?

I don’t have a url yet. The website only exists on my hard drive at the moment.

The online tutorials I had been using were less than clear. I tried using colgroup with span and width, but for some reason it didn’t work. I wasn’t sure where to put the tags or where to put the closing tags or how many I needed to use.

But I finally managed to put a width tag in each <td> and I think this has worked. I have enough rows and columns to make the whole background graphic display and I put %nbsp in all of the <td>’s and then put some sample text in one of them to make sure the cells remained the same size. I may have to adjust the width tags once I have a better idea of what I want them to contain, but I think it will work.

you need to check css my friend!!!