Arghhh. I thought I had cracked this problem but it's still not quite right.

I have a CSS page with 2 columns... http://www.lochwinnoch.info/aid/

in Firefox everything is ok'ish
in explorer everything is ok'ish

I have a second page with the same 2 columns http://www.lochwinnoch.info/forum/

in Firefox the forum table resizes ok
in Explorer the table makes the div jump down when you make the window smaller

I tried using float: left; but although that fixed the Explorer problem, the Firefox div kept jumping. I am currently setting a margin-left and forum table width of 95% (at 100% the forum div kept jumping)

Can someone give me a night off bashing my head against a brick wall and throw some suggestions this way about what's going on? How can I get a table to behave inside a div in both Explorer and Firefox?

thanks

Having had a quick look at your code (and there is quite a bit of that),

There appear to be a number of issues. The main one that I think you really need to pay considerable attention to is the mixed use of percentage and fixed widths in both the tables and the divs.

Whilst it is quite feasible to use such a combination, one has to be particularly careful when doing so. What is not clear from the code and css is what screen resolution you are designing for. The minimum it would have to be is 1024 as the banner photo is 900px wide. This is going to mean that a lot of users will not be able to view the site without sideways scrolling. The forum page actually looks okay at 1024 resolution in both IE6 and Firefox with the exception of the forum menu which has wrapped one of the links (Forum Guidelines) onto a "new line".

When viewed at 1152 resolution the forum table spills out to the 90% width of the container div, meaning it is no longer aligned to the right side of the top banner. This looks untidy, but remains functional.

I was unable to see evidence of the table jumping down the page, but suggest you need to make a decision whether you are designing for a fixed width or a fluid width and stick with that. The only fixed width I would use in an essentially fluid set up would be for the left navigation div, which as it's floated, will not affect the overall fluidity of the page layout.

Hope this helps (a bit)

Ian

On the second page div jumped down in IE due the nowrap effect.

In the TD-tag (and in the TH-tag ) you have nowrap-attribute inserted.
Every record of table works like nowrap line. It is necessary to erase all nowrap attributes.

Thanks... Yes, your point about design resolution is spot on. I am undecided about jumping up to 1024 from the old 800 design and that shows. A survey of the local userbase showed that few people view with the lower resolution these days. There will be some and perhaps I should stick with the lowest denominator.... arghh... stuff it, no. I'll design for 1024 and see how it goes. I'll try to tidy up the % and fixed widths issue.

nowrap... I'll have a closer look at that one.

I should be developing this all offline but it's an unpaid hobby/chore/albatross and I got to the point where if I didn't go live with the rough version on the main pages, it was going to languish in test land for months and months and months. If it's live I'll get nipped at and reminded to tinker with it.

Thanks for taking the time to comment

Hi again,

Glad we were of some assistance.

.. it's an unpaid hobby/chore/albatross..

I know how you can feel, but as you are putting so much hard work and effort into the community, you might like to consider selling a small amount of advertising on the site, just to get a little bit of a return for your investment of effort. Hopefully the community will appreciate what you have done and support you in this.

If you need any more help/advice, please don't hesitate to post here as I am sure there is someone who will be able to help.

Regards
Ian