Safari and IE 5.2 on the mac not rendering correctly

Browser issue

[Jimbob23]

Hi guys,

Basically Im designing a web site using tables and css. I have three stacked tables (one header, main body and a footer). The main body consists of a table that is set to 100% width and several nested tables in the main tables' <td> tags. Like this:

<table width="100%">
<tr>
<td width="5%">
<table class="menu">
... MENU HERE contents ..
</table>
</td>
<table>
<td class="content" width="55%">
... CONTENT HERE ..
</td>
<td class="border" width="31%">
<table class="submenu">
... Sub Menu Here ..
</table>
</td>
<td width="9%">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
</table>

Here is the web site in question: <Sorry, no personal URLs. See TOS [webmasterworld.com]>

Now when my brother views this in either Safari or Internet Explorer 5.2 on the Macintosh the width of the contents table is considerable smaller, thus pushing the content down and causing the user to scroll.

Does any-one know why this is, I a baffled!
thanks
Jim-Bob

[edited by: tedster at 5:25 pm (utc) on Aug. 13, 2004]

[tedster]

Did you validate your mark-up [validator.w3.org]?

I ask because I see invalid contructions in the pseudo-code you posted above - the content table begins, incorrectly, after a </td>

If there are errors in the table mark-up, then each browser and operating system will be using its own error recovery routines, and that means inconsistent results.

[Jimbob23]

It is valid html 4.01 according to w3.org

[Jimbob23]

Sorry I posted it wrong .. it should look like this:

<table width="100%">
<tr>
<td width="5%">
<table class="menu">
... MENU HERE contents ..
</table>
</td>
<td class="content" width="55%">
... CONTENT HERE ..
</td>
<td class="border" width="31%">
<table class="submenu">
... Sub Menu Here ..
</table>
</td>
<td width="9%">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
</table>