expanding tables

[futureknight]

I guess one could spend one's life forever trying to master tables and fail (at least I would).

I've designed my page with 4 columns... 3 of them have specified pixels widths, one doesn't. the intention is that the one without the width specification will expand if the person is using a bigger browser or else grabs and expands the window manually. I used pixels instead of percentages because I want those 3 other columns to be finite.

why then? does it not work that way?

the problem really manifests itself if I have another row in my table: I can have it be one cell (with a colspan of 4) and if I put a graphic in there that would cause the page to expand..i can see that the other columns are expanding as well...

[tedster]

Have you tried giving the table width="100%" - and then possibly the "expanding" cell could also be dictated as width="100%". A browser should interperet that cell attribute as 100% of whatever is available.