<tr>
   <td width="80">stuff</td>
   <td width="100%">stuff</td>
   <td width="200">stuff</td>
</tr>
[download]

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

Thanks, but that's not exactly what I meant. The question was about avoiding Javascript, if it's at-all possible.

About no tables, this sounds interesting but I don't know if I'll have the time to learn that.

Thanks anyway, guys...

That answer will help you solve the problem. Define your cell widths and the rest will follow. Use percentage widths and if you absolutely must alter your HTML based on screen size then you'll need to use JavaScript to fetch it.

A thought crossed my mind - would allowing the viewer to change the number of columns be a possibility? If so, you could use something like the following script:

use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI qw(:standard);

print header,start_html,start_form,
   p(
      'How many columns? ',
      popup_menu(-name=>'cols',-values=>[1..16]),
   ),
   submit,end_form,hr,
;

my $cols = param('cols') || 4;

my @one_d = map sprintf('%02x',$_) x 3, reverse (0..255);
my @two_d =
   map[ @one_d[$_..$_+$cols-1] ],
   range(0,$#one_d,$cols)
;

print p("there are $cols columns:"),
   table(
      map {Tr( map {td{bgcolor=>"#$_"},$_} @$_ )} @two_d
   ),
   end_html,
;

sub range {grep!(($_-$_[0])%($_[2]||1)),$_[0]..$_[1]}
[download]

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

   form.windowidth = window.width;
[download]

/J\

Well if you aren't worried about Netscape 4 then its real easy to fix this problem with CSS.

1. Don't use tables! Use <div> tags instead.
2. Assign each column an ID
3. Set the position for each column on the id (you'll probably need position:absolute; use top and left to put it on the page where you want it)</code>
4. Make a class that you can specify for each column. Set the width you want the columns to be (can be a percentage as well) and set the height to 'auto' and the div will grow with your content going down the page.

There are some other tricks like setting your divs to scroll if there is too much content. Have a look at http://w3schools.org/ for some examples and other parameters.

Update 2003-06-10: I was asked to provide an example which can be found here. The example was tested with Mozilla, Konqueror, IE 5.5 and Opera 7. The only problem I found was that Konqueror doesn't properly recognize the scroll property. Enjoy. (P.S. code on that page is free for anyone to use/modify/whatever)

BTW - The problem with setting column width in ie5 is that microsoft of course takes the 'recomendation' part of the w3c recomendations seriously and does whatever they bloody well like to, so it only works in optimal conditions.