HTML CSS How to stop a table cell from expanding

Question

Hi,

I have a table which is built with the contents coming from a returned dataset. What I want to do is stop a 'description' cell from expanding over 280px wide, no matter what the content length (its s string). I have tried:

<td align="left" valign="top" style="overflow:hidden;" nowrap="nowrap" width="280px" >

But this doesn't seem to work. I don't want it to wrap, nor do I want anything over 280px to be displayed.

Thanks for the advice, R.

Answer 1

It appears that your HTML syntax is incorrect for the table cell. Before you try the other idea below, confirm if this works or not... You can also try adding this to your table itself: table-layout:fixed.. .

<td style="overflow: hidden; width: 280px; text-align: left; valign: top; whitespace: nowrap;">
   [content]
</td>

New HTML

<td>
   <div class="MyClass"">
       [content]
   </div>
</td>

CSS Class:

.MyClass{
   height: 280px; 
   width: 456px; 
   overflow: hidden;
   whitespace: nowrap;
}

Answer 2

<table border="1" width="183" style='table-layout:fixed'>
  <col width="67">
  <col width="75">
  <col width="41">
  <tr>
    <td>First Column</td>
    <td>Second Column</td>
    <td>Third Column</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Row 1</td>
    <td>Text</td>
    <td align="right">1</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Row 2</td>
    <td>Abcdefg</td>
    <td align="right">123</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Row 3</td>
    <td>Abcdefghijklmnop</td>
    <td align="right">123456</td>
  </tr>
</table>

I know it's old school, but give that a try, it works.

may also want to add this:

<style>
  td {overflow:hidden;}
</style>