I’ve just spent a frustrating few weeks trying to create a 3-column website for a client where the middle column does one very simple thing – to expand dynamically to fit the content.
Basically, it can’t.
Which just seems crazy to me. Where is the benefit of having tables, images, any fixed size element overlapping the adjacent area when its enclosing DIV becomes too small? Surely this is something that should have been considered when the spec was being drafted? If you look at my site and make the window really small then the “What’s new” image eventually overlaps (or is overlapped by) the right hand side.
I would regard myself as a fully paid-up member of the pro-CSS camp, but if it can’t do something that simple and common then it’s of limited value and other methods have to be entertained. In this case I’ve had to resort to a table to create the columns, which does exactly what I want but makes me weep to think that I have to add this to my beautiful code. This table makes the code more complicated and reduces the accessibility of the site.