Tables inside tables - not formatting correctly in Notes (fine in web)

I am building a website using ND6.01, & have observed strange (& annoying) behaviour with tables inside tables.

The main webpage Form has the ‘template’ layout of the site pages on it, arranged with tables inside tables, with a Body field in the middle of the tables. On each document, I then put in more tables inside tables, to build up the structure of each page.

The layout is a ‘fixed-width’ layout, so it doesn’t resize width-wise, & originally this layout was positioned on the left of the page.

Then the client expressed a wish for the whole layout to be moved to the centre of the page instead, so I placed the whole table inside a ‘within margins’ table, three columns by one row, with the middle column fixed width.

Now here’s the thing: although the page seems fine when viewed with a web browser, each & every time I open the page with the Notes client, the margins inside the original table get all screwed up. If I save the document without sorting it out, next time it’s opened in Notes, it’s even more screwed up. To fix it, I have to change the inner table properties to ‘fixed width’, then back to ‘within margins’ (of the fixed width table column it is contained by), which seems to sort it out.

However, regardless of how screwed up it seems in Notes, it’s always fine in the web browser.

Whilst this sounds unimportant, it after all being a web site, I’m hoping that the client will use a Notes client to update the site once it’s finished (there are two many tables for them to use a web browser), & I can’t tell the client to keep changing the table properties twice, each time they edit a page!

Anyone come across this type of behaviour? Will it disappear with a later release? Everything’s currently R6.01.

Thanks, any help appreciated.

Subject: Found a kinda workaround - but why does it do it?

I’ve just discovered that if having set that table to fixed width, then to fit within margins, if I then set it back to fixed width (having made the width the same as the margins again), it seems to stay fixed, even in Notes.

Definitely weird behaviour.

I’ve also just discovered that a bug that is affecting another of our clients’ websites has been fixed in R6.51 - I wonder if this is a bug that will be fixed?

Subject: RE: Found a kinda workaround - but why does it do it?

It looks like there is a real problem with nested (html) tables… We’ve seen this here when users receive html mail, it gets all messed up

Subject: Ah yes, I too have seen HTML emails get messed up.

Subject: RE: Ah yes, I too have seen HTML emails get messed up.

There has long been a problem with nested tables on the web… notably if you merge rows within a nested table, the html output gets really hinky. Any time I’ve found myself in a position where I absolutely can’t find another way to get the result I want, I use html to build the table(s). This seems to work much better than letting Domino generate the html from Notes-created tables.