Why are we experiencing a table sizing issue with set pixel widths?

[ITistic]

http://tinyurl.com/5z4yo4

When viewing this page in Internet Explorer for the first time the
outer most table is much wider than it should be and then slowly
resizes to the correct size as images are loaded. It's impossible for
us to set the dimensions of the product images as they are unknown to
the e-commerce software which generates these pages. The pages display
in Firefox perfectly.

What can we do to correct this?

[dorayme]

In article
<c3**********************************@a70g2000hsh. googlegroups.com>,
ITistic <sh***@itistic.comwrote:

http://tinyurl.com/5z4yo4

When viewing this page in Internet Explorer for the first time the
outer most table is much wider than it should be and then slowly
resizes to the correct size as images are loaded. It's impossible for
us to set the dimensions of the product images as they are unknown to
the e-commerce software which generates these pages. The pages display
in Firefox perfectly.

What can we do to correct this?

First thing to do is to correct the "Failed validation, 153 Errors" at
http://validator.w3.org/

--
dorayme

[Jim Moe]

On 05/21/08 12:48 pm, ITistic wrote:

http://tinyurl.com/5z4yo4

When viewing this page in Internet Explorer for the first time the
outer most table is much wider than it should be and then slowly
resizes to the correct size as images are loaded. It's impossible for
us to set the dimensions of the product images as they are unknown to
the e-commerce software which generates these pages. The pages display
in Firefox perfectly.

What can we do to correct this?

Provide the width of the images. How do you get the images?
Do you have some sort of server-side application that generates the
(godawful) HTML code? If so, use that application's services to query the
image size.

The site has worse problems than twitchy tables. The layout is extremely
fragile. Even slightly increasing the text size causes rapid degradation
of the display.
The text size is set to 11px, 68% of my preferred size (16px). I have a
minimum font size of 13px (which I find barely readable) and the first
impression of your site was "Yuck!" because the layout fell apart.
Then there are all of the validation errors.... For instance, mixing
HTML and XHTML syntax is inexcusably sloppy.

--
jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

[ITistic]

On May 22, 1:12 am, Jim Moe <[e-mail]:

On 05/21/08 12:48 pm, ITistic wrote:

http://tinyurl.com/5z4yo4

When viewing this page in Internet Explorer for the first time the
outer most table is much wider than it should be and then slowly
resizes to the correct size as images are loaded. It's impossible for
us to set the dimensions of the product images as they are unknown to
the e-commerce software which generates these pages. The pages display
in Firefox perfectly.

What can we do to correct this?

Provide the width of the images. How do you get the images?
Do you have some sort of server-side application that generates the
(godawful) HTML code? If so, use that application's services to query the
image size.

The site has worse problems than twitchy tables. The layout is extremely
fragile. Even slightly increasing the text size causes rapid degradation
of the display.
The text size is set to 11px, 68% of my preferred size (16px). I have a
minimum font size of 13px (which I find barely readable) and the first
impression of your site was "Yuck!" because the layout fell apart.
Then there are all of the validation errors.... For instance, mixing
HTML and XHTML syntax is inexcusably sloppy.

--
jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

The images are uploaded through a piece of software which does not
store the image dimensions. I'd rather not have to programatically
open each image to determine it's dimensions before serving as that
would put a heavy load on the server. I just thought it'd be possible
to somehow tell IE not to render them so big initially before they
were downloaded. You'd think it's render them smaller before it knew,
not bigger. Firefox does exactly that.

[Jim Moe]

On 05/22/08 09:01 am, ITistic wrote:

>>
Provide the width of the images. How do you get the images?
Do you have some sort of server-side application that generates the
(godawful) HTML code? If so, use that application's services to query the
image size.

The images are uploaded through a piece of software which does not
store the image dimensions. I'd rather not have to programatically
open each image to determine it's dimensions before serving as that
would put a heavy load on the server. I just thought it'd be possible
to somehow tell IE not to render them so big initially before they
were downloaded. You'd think it's render them smaller before it knew,
not bigger. Firefox does exactly that.

You'll have to ask MS about IE's odd behavior. Since MS made no changes
to the HTML or CSS aspects of IE6 for 5 years, your only hope is that it
is not a problem in IE7. Or IE8.
Or query the image file for its width and add it to the <imgelement's
attributes. Have you run any benchmarks to determine what the server load
might be? Or you could cache the image sizes for lookup later.

--
jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

[Pete]

On May 21, 2:48 pm, ITistic <[e-mail]:

http://tinyurl.com/5z4yo4

When viewing this page in Internet Explorer for the first time the
outer most table is much wider than it should be and then slowly
resizes to the correct size as images are loaded. It's impossible for
us to set the dimensions of the product images as they are unknown to
the e-commerce software which generates these pages. The pages display
in Firefox perfectly.

What can we do to correct this?

Along with the validation errors, the page is built with a bad mix of
nested tables for layout with a little bit of convoluted CSS thrown
in. Table widths and table cell widths (td's) are defined both inline
in the HTML and in the CSS. This should really be cleaned up.

Since it appears the table resizing only happens in IE, I'd guess it
has to do with how IE handles the CSS box model or that IE doesn't
regard max-width in CSS without some workarounds.

[Pete]

On May 21, 2:48 pm, ITistic <[e-mail]:

http://tinyurl.com/5z4yo4

When viewing this page in Internet Explorer for the first time the
outer most table is much wider than it should be and then slowly
resizes to the correct size as images are loaded. It's impossible for
us to set the dimensions of the product images as they are unknown to
the e-commerce software which generates these pages. The pages display
in Firefox perfectly.

What can we do to correct this?

Along with the validation errors, the page is built with a bad mix of
nested tables for layout with a little bit of convoluted CSS thrown
in. Table widths and table cell widths (td's) are defined both inline
in the HTML and in the CSS. This should really be cleaned up.

Since it appears the table resizing only happens in IE, I'd guess it
has to do with how IE handles the CSS box model or that IE doesn't
regard max-width in CSS without some workarounds.