Question

Table cell auto resize problem

Asked by: steveo225

I have a table, and one cell in particular needs to be a specific size. the problem is that the content is dynamic and sometimes the cell must grow to support the internal data. This looks terrible when the cell resizes on its own. I have tried using 'overflow:hidden' with no success. Also, in IE, the cell acts as though 'white-space:nowrap' is on, which is the opposite effect and not what happens in Firefox.

Basically, what I am looking for is a solution that prevents the cell from resizing no matter the contents, and for data to wrap when there isn't enough space.

Thanks

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Asked On
2007-05-14 at 14:22:21ID22571691
Tags

table

,

cell

,

resize

,

auto

Topic

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

Participating Experts
2
Points
0
Comments
7

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Answers

 

by: ThogekPosted on 2007-05-14 at 15:43:07ID: 19089059

Do you have any whitespace (spaces, tabs, etc.) within this data?  If so, the text should wrap normally.  If not...

    overflow: hidden;
should work.  If it's not, I'd be a bit concerned over figuring out why, which is likely to depend on the exact HTML and CSS you're using.

Other options include:
    word-wrap: break-wrap;
    word-break: break-all;

I'm not sure that these two are supported by Firefox, though...

 

by: steveo225Posted on 2007-05-14 at 16:52:40ID: 19089406

Despite spaces in the text, IE refuses to wrap without an explicit break. Both Firefox and IE still grow as the space is needed for text, despite overflow:hidden

Not sre what to do about this. Even with your suggestion Thogek, it still isn't working correctly.

The following is an exerp of the important part, javascript partially fills the main cell causing the overflow

td.main{vertical-align:middle;text-align:center;overflow:hidden;white-space:normal;}
<table style="margin:auto;">
      ...
      <tr class="h1">
            <td colspan="4" rowspan="2" class="main">
                  Some div's an p's in here
            </td>
      </tr>
      ...
</table>

 

by: steveo225Posted on 2007-05-14 at 17:01:48ID: 19089440

Ok, solved IE's no wrap problem, I had to specify the width, it seems without explictly declaring the width, and possibly height, the text would only wrap as needed to for the page width, and nothing less, but overflow:hidden; does not help keeping the height stay constant when the cell grows.

 

by: ThogekPosted on 2007-05-15 at 11:14:05ID: 19094908

Do you mean that you hadn't specified the width in the HTML (or CSS) to begin with?
It would be kinda difficult for the browser to divine what width you wanted the element to be if you don't tell it.  ;-)

Height might do the same if you specify it via CSS, but probably not if specified via HTML.

 

by: steveo225Posted on 2007-05-16 at 14:59:12ID: 19104672

The problem was, all the cells, and the table surrounding this one was defined with the hopes that the cell in question would default to the height and width remaining. By calculating and specifing them both, the wrapping helped, but the resizing problem still exists.

 

by: Computer101Posted on 2007-07-05 at 15:45:20ID: 19428132

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Computer101
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20120131-EE-VQP-002

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