page margins

how NN and IE handle page margins

page 2 of 4

page 1
• setting css page margins
• introducing a table
page 2
• using a full-width table
• centering the table
• centering out of p tags
• the unpredictable nn
page 3
• setting margins with p tags
• introducing another table
• centering the new table
page 4
• hard coding margins
• centering with hard coded margins

using a full-width table

Let's make the table full-width and place it between its own P tags. In both browsers we see:

we see in NN4.7:	we see in IE5.0:
we see in NN6.0:

Each browser has its own way of dealing with this alignment. Both break out of the BODY tag margin width as defined by the CSS page margin definitions.

centering the table

Let's change the ALIGN value of the table from LEFT to CENTER. In both browsers we see:

we see in NN4.7:	we see in IE5.0:
we see in NN6.0:

NN4.7 has completely collapsed trying to align the table. It not only has lost the formatting information for the P tag that the table is in, but now has lost the BODY formatting information for the paragraph that follows. If what I just said sounds familiar, it's because I said it about NN4.7 when we tried to get it to work with a left-aligned table on the previous page.

centering out of p tags

Let's center the table and keep it out of P tags. Only the text will be placed inside P tags. In the browsers we see:

we see in NN4.7:	we see in IE5.0:
we see in NN6.0:

NN4.7 doesn't properly center the table; the table is much wider than the text margins.

the unpredictable nn

The above rendering is possibly unique to this example. I have had centered tables with NN and only lost the formatting for the paragraph the table was in, not the paragraphs following. NN has shown itself to be unpredictable in its rendering of tables on pages formatted by stylesheets.