Re: Alignment in table cells

On 2 Dec 2012 as I do recall,
Michael Drake wrote:

> In article <682ee8f752.harriet@blueyonder.co.uk>,
> Harriet Bazley <lists@orange.wingsandbeaks.org.uk> wrote:
>
> > I'm having weird issues with table cell right-alignment in the second
> > row of a table.
[snip]

> > This code used to display as expected on NetSurf 2.9
>
> NetSurf 2.9 and recent CI builds should render it in exactly the same way.
> They do here.
>
I'm fairly sure they didn't, since so far as I know this was what I used
to set up the tabulation in the first place... but it was a long time
ago. I've only noticed the change since the introduction of v3.0, but
it may have been around for a while.

[snip]


> To achieve what you want you probably need the "colspan" attribute, if
> you're actually presenting tabulated data.

What I actually want is two columns on the left and right of the page,
occupying the full width of the window (with whitespace in between if
necessary), plus a centred block of data at the top: depending on the
width of the window, the wider elements of the second 'row' may well
overlap the centred element of the first row.

Table head:

<image> <block block of
of right
centred aligned
data> data

<long left-aligned data> <long right-aligned-data>


Tabluated data
<DD>
<DT>
<DD>
<DT>
<DD>
<DT>



>
> Otherwise, if you're abusing the table element to achieve some layout
> effect, you may as well have two tables: one for each row. (Which lets
> you arrange it so that the positions of the column boundaries on one row
> do not affect the positions of columns on the second row, if that's what
> you are trying to do.)


I'm trying to ensure that the width of the entire table is consistent -
but presumably I could do that by using TABLE WIDTH="100%" on two
separate tables?

What exactly does the cell WIDTH apply to, if it doesn't apply to the
percentage of the total width of this row? Does it only apply on the
first occurrence in order to define the width of the entire column
below?

> Or better, use a CSS based layout.
>
How would/should I use CSS to achieve the layout above? I find
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/tables.html extremely confusing:
http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/tables-the-next-evolution-in-css-layout
(looks old) specifically says that "CSS does not allow for table cells
to span rows or columns" though there are "ways to fake them". I've
only ever managed to 'float' boxes in CSS, which isn't really what's
required here.

I don't really want to use absolute positioning, because I want the
layout to 'flow' like proper HTML; I also want the cell data to wrap if
necessary.
--
Harriet Bazley == Loyaulte me lie ==

At the cutting edge of technology, one tends to end up bleeding