Perhaps Isurfr's idea for the item would work, but how can you float a table? Even if you could float a table, that is five times the code I'd ever want to use for the problem. Call me stupid, but I would have thought that when you want a box 100%, it is 100%. 100% of the page does not include a margin, because that margin is an area where nothing goes. You don't put a margin on the body unless you intend it to be space around a page. Even with the JavaScript to sort out the width problem, the ultimate code doesn't even come to half what you suggest.

Originally Posted by jono1 margin and padding are *supposed* to be added on to the width value. IE gets it wrong. look at it in any standards compliant browser and it will be added on.

Why would anybody want to add margin and padding onto the width value? If you do that, it is impossible without hacking to get a floating Div that uses Padding to be the width of a page? Surely that is the most stupid idea ever invented?

Originally Posted by dereklapp that's how CSS works. go through w3.org and see for yourself. and the point is to be logical. width: 100%; padding:10px; you first tell it to make a box 100% of the browser window, so it does. the next instruction is to add 10px to the top,right,bottom,left of said box.

Well then perhaps the twits at W3C have some serious problems. That is not at all logical.

When you make a box out of wood. You measure the wood. The width of the box is the width of the wood you build it from. Inside the Box, you then insert padding, to pad the box out. Make that box the body, when making the box, the width is the size of the box. The magin is an area around the box that stops it going too close to something around it. The width therefore is the width of the box, and not of the area around it. On a piece of paper, you have the magin. The width of the page is the area inside the margin, because if you set something in side it to be the width of the page and it included the margin, you would have it cut off. The margin is there so that you boarder the content with white space.

Tell me how putting padding around a box makes sense? Tell me how putting margin inside a box makes sense? Then tell me that is logical.