How to prevent cell heights from changing when a table is added in Dreamweaver?

I'm designing a new web page but am having troubles keeping my navigation bar from changing it's height dimensions when I add a table in the content area to the left. The entire page is basically a table split down the middle to make a navigation bar to the left, and then an area for written content to the right. The navigation bar is one cell that has been split into 6 cells, every time I add a table to the content area, the 6 cells expand to the length of the page, even in the browser preview.How to prevent cell heights from changing when a table is added in Dreamweaver?
1) Stop using tables for layout. Tables are used to display tabular data. Layouts are done in style sheets.



2) If you insist on using tab;es, use absolute sizes.



2) Stop using Dreamweaver.How to prevent cell heights from changing when a table is added in Dreamweaver?
the problems you are having here is one reason why CSS was developed - but it does take a little bit to learn. just be aware that soon you will be as a web designer.

as for your answer, that's just how tables work. if you put in the heights manually, you can override that, just be sure all of your math is correct - the numbers will have to add up exactly to the total height of the table as specified in the opening tag.

another option (a bad solution, but a solution nonetheless) would be to create an entirely new table *inside* that table, which will seperate it from the other one so it will not be affected when you add things to cells in the other table.



but seriously: using tables for page layout is unprofessional, very bad for search engines to find, very difficult to maintain (as you can see) and -obsolete-!