displaying results using align="left"

[Anon]

Hello, I'm trying to build a web page in php and html that delivers a side table and a table in the middle with search result.

To do this I’ve aligned the side table to the left (i.e. <table width="188" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0 align="left">), so that the search results can be displayed at the same level as the side table. I.e. instead of displaying 2 tables 1 underneath each other the tables are displayed side by side.

It’s necessary to do it in this way bcs the results are being flushed (and I want to display this left table before the results are queried and eventually displayed).

Everything works fine, except that when the results table (containing 50 rows) exceeds the table to the left (at about row 10, but this varies between browsers and screen display) the results shift to the left (and to the right in Netscape). The reason is that there’s no longer the left table, so the results align to the centre still (but no left table means no alignment with the results that had the left table).

Obviously, one way to solve this is to say if results exceed the length of the left table insert another table = to the width of the left table – then everything gets aligned properly. This is a pain but I did it anyway for all the results displays. Then I checked it in Netscape and the results distort ridiculously (some are completely off the page).

Does anyone know how to get around this very annoying problem please?

Thank you,

Jason

[angela-sw-uk]

Newbie suggests (which means it might not work):

Have you tried using <div> to specify an exact position for your tables

E.g.
Immediately before first table type
<div style="position:absolute; z-index:1;
left: 25px; top: 40px; width: 188px;
height: 36px">

Immediately after first table type
</div>

Immediately before second table type
<div style="position:absolute; z-index:1;
left: 250px; top: 40px; width: 300px;
height: 36px">

Immediately after second table type
</div>

This would give you "absolute" positions: table one starting 25px from left margin of browser, second table starting 250px from left margin (25px + 188 = 213 so 12px between tables in this example)

Values represent:
left - pixels from left of page
top - pixels from top of page
width - width of table in pixels

Hope this isn't a complete red herring.

🙂