CSS: Set a maximum width on a table

Question

I'm generating application logs in html, and I've stumbled across a rather annoying problem. I have the following layout :

| Action | Result | File path           |

For example

| Copy | Success | C:\VeryVeryVeryLongF |
|      |         | ileName.txt          |

Columns 1 and 2 only display short labels : their contents should stay on one single line. On the other hand, column 3 may contain very long file paths, which should span multiple line if they can't fit on a single line.

To achieve this, I've used white-space: nowrap; on the first columns, and white-space: normal; word-break: break-all; on the last. Also, the table has width:100%.

This works great in Chrome and IE, but not in Firefox : In short, I can't seem to find a way to tell Firefox 8.0 to not enlarge the last column of the table, and instead let the text span multiple lines. In my previous example, Firefox prints

| Copy | Success | C:\VeryVeryVeryLongFileName.txt |

The text in the first two columns may vary, so I can't set their width manually and use table-layout: fixed. I've also tried setting max-width on the table, and wrapping it in a div, to no avail.

See http://jsfiddle.net/GQsFx/6/ for a real-life example =) How can I make Firefox behave like Chrome?

Solution

Will this work? This appears to work with the jsfiddle. Percentage based first two cols, then width auto the third, with table-layout: fixed on the table.

http://jsfiddle.net/keithwyland/uuF9k/1/

.actions {
  width:100%;
  table-layout: fixed;
}

.actions tr td {
  white-space: nowrap;
  width: 15%;
}

.actions tr td:nth-child(3) {
  white-space: normal;   
  word-break: break-all;
  word-wrap: break-word;
  width: auto;
}

Comments

[Clément]

You're using a fixed size for the third column, which doesn't do what I need: I need the third column to be as wide as possible.

[Clément]

That doesn't change anything :/

[Frederick Marcoux]

Ohh crap! I don't know why, sorry!

[Clément]

I don't want to specify a maximum width for the third column, since the webpage might be viewed on a wide range of monitors...

[Clément]

This is not optimal: all colums end up taking the same space, while the two first ones could be shrunk without breaking their content, giving more space for the last one.

[Anish Gupta]

That is not what the OP asked for.

[Clément]

Right, but I don't want to set the width of the columns... And percentages don't work well with window scaling (15% of half a 800px screen is really not much). What I need is a size calculated based on the contents...

[ubershmekel]

The only way I've found to avoid the table being too large was with table {table-layout: fixed;} or with td limiting e.g. td { max-width: 100px; text-overflow: ellipsis; overflow: hidden;}