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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-30T11:07:45+00:00

i want a table to render with minimum width according to its content, but

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i want a table to render with minimum width according to its content, but IE7 insists on expanding it to 100% width.

The following little snippet works fine in Firefox and IE8, but not in IE7:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
  <head>
    <style type="text/css">
      table { table-layout: fixed  }
      td { padding: 0 10px; border: 1px solid blue;}
    </style>
  </head>
  <body>
<table>
      <tr>
        <td>Column with variable width</td>
        <td style="width: 100px;">Column 2</td>
        <td style="width: 100px;">Column 3</td>
      </tr>
    </table>
  </body>
</html>
  • I have a table with table-layout: fixed.
  • I have specified the width of all cells except the first one.
  • In the first column, i want the browser to determine the width based on the content
  • As I don’t know the width of the first column, I cannot (and do not want to) specify the width of the table.

Now, the problem in IE7 is that the table is rendered to 100% width. So the first col has not the minimum width that is required to display its content but takes up all the space to make the table 100% width.

Here is what i found out so far:

  • when i remove “table-layout: fixed” from the table, the table will not expand to 100%. Unfortunatly, that’s not an option for me.
  • when i set the table-width to a very small size (like e.g. 10px), the first col will not be expanded to the minimum required width, but will disappear entirerly.
  • i tried to set “display: inline;” for the table, but that has no effects on the width.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advace,
Pitter

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If only purpose of table-layout: fixed is to fix widths of cells, then you can add DIVs with desired width inside TD and get rid of table-layout: fixed for table.

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