Problem with XHTML liquid layout

[ADAM Web Design]

http://prod.adamwebdesign.com/web_de...r=2&Sample=dog

This is actually my first serious project with XHTML, and so far I'm learning that compared to HTML 4.01, it has a long way to go. But I digress. Any time I put either a table or a div into the middle cell (where the content goes), in Firefox it works fine but in IE it just stretches the layout out.

The question is: why? And I won't hear "it's because you're not using divs for your layout" because that whole concept just doesn't make sense in a liquid layout to me (and when I did try to do it with divs, it just totally destroyed the layout so I went back to tables and it's fine.)

So...why does this idiotic behaviour keep occurring?

Thanks.

[HardCoded]

Make sure you validate..I'm not saying that's why it happens, but it might be.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...26Sample%3Ddog

[matauri]

When I have tried fluid hybrids I had the same probs between IE & Firefox. So I found it easier to lose the tables for the actual page layout & just use them in the content if necessary.

Here is a fluid header/footer/3col template that I used when first venturing into xhtml.
http://urlgreyhot.com/files/css/css-3col-2.html

HTH!

[ADAM Web Design]

I tried the DIV way before and never could get it to work properly and quite frankly, never understood why a three-column layout should be in DIVs like that when it is, for all intents and purposes, a table structure. They are three columns of equal height and varying width, which basically means they're table cells.

That, and the whole logic of the DIV structure just does not make sense to me. The whole idea of putting the left and right columns before the middle column, besides being less search engine friendly, is ludicrous in the sense that we don't read things that way and it would be a lot harder to debug code since we read things left-to-right.

As far as the validation thing goes, that's not it. I've taken that out and had the same problem.

The margin thing I may give a try though. See what happens.

[HardCoded]

The problem you are having is caused by percentage padding rules on the embedded paragraphs.

#rightmiddle p, #content p, #descriptorbox p {
padding-left:  2%;
padding-right:  2%;
padding-bottom:  0;
padding-top:  0;
}

Take those out and problem should go away. Why does IE puke on that? No idea. I've noticed it in my own projects though.

[ADAM Web Design]

Yeah, that was it. Thanks, HardCoded. I normally don't code padding in percentages, but in this case I was trying to make it a little more universally friendly. Something to remember, though.