tables collapse despite fixed widths, and need to be refreshed

[jarfarri]

Why do tables and td's collapse sometimes when they have fixed widths? the look fine after a refresh, but occasionally collapse down on first load.

[MotherNatrsSon]

Even if there is a fixed widht, if there is nothing at all in the td's they might collapse because of the way browsers layout tables.

Got a link to the problem?

Do you use spacer gifs?

MNS

[jarfarri]

Yeah, I use spacer images, but this happens even with regular gifs and jpgs too though. the table will collapse on itself sometimes, but looks fine after a refresh. here's a link

http://bpo.indiana.edu

[Fang]

First validate (http://validator.w3.org/) your page.
There are about 200 corrections that need to be made.

Do you mean tables do not appear (validate) or that images do not appear (IE bug)?

[jarfarri]

everything still appears to some extent. its never a matter of content not showing up at all. in fact this problem actually occurs very rarely, but sometimes images within a table will become overlapped, as if the table has collapsed. when the page is refreshed everything looks fine.

[Fang]

All images should have height and width attributes, this will help with the correct layout during loading.
Then validate! Invalid code causes errors in layout.

[jarfarri]

i'll check both of those possibilities. thanks for the advice!