cells with colspans and specified widths divide their width provisionally between the columns they span. This provisional division is ammended by any cell in any of the effected columns that:
1) has a colspan=1, and
2) has a width specified
the widths of all other columns must be adjusted for cells like these. Further complicating matters is that it seems <faith> that if multiple colspanning cells intersect a column and each has a width
specified such that the column would have a different width depending on which is used, only the first such cell is used </faith>. I can neither confirm nor deny this reading the mozilla code.
I also taught the cell map how to deal with this situation:
colspan=1 | colspan=2 | colspan=1
colspan=1 | colspan=2 | colspan=1
This table "really" has 4 columns, but the middle cells are treated as if they have no colspan.
Trust me, it matters. The original colspan attributes can't simply be thrown away because Mr. DOM
could come along at any time and add/remove a cell that would make them important.
this work exposed a few bugs and slow spots, which have been fixed
for the aol page, I added some additional backwards compatibility code
to proportionately distribute width when a fixed-width cell has colspans
buster%netscape.com
buster
rods
kipp