Complex table, different cells' widths requirements - css

Question

It's not easy explaining the need here, but here is the playground for the problem.
Playground
Requirements:
First cell has FIXED width
Middle cell width takes the rest of the space
Last cell's width depends on it's children's width
The Question:
How can the middle cell take the rest of the row's space, without being "taken over" by it's child's greater width?
this is a simplified version of my problem, using real tables instead of CSS tables)

Answer 1

Without specific markup, it's hard to propose an exact solution, but here are some things to consider.
The left-most fixed-width cell is easily handled by setting its width. e.g. width: 100px. (This cell isn't really relevant to the problem; in a sense it can be ignored.)
If I'm interpreting correctly, you want to prevent the right-most cell from wrapping. That's easy or hard, depending on the content. For pure text, it can be achieved with white-space: nowrap. If the content isn't strictly text, perhaps you can coerce it into acting like text, e.g. display: inline.
For the middle cell, you don't specify what you want to happen to the excess content. Hide it? Add a horizontal scroll bar? You also don't indicate what this content is. But most likely you'll want to set the overflow-x property to some suitable value.

Answer 2

Solution playground
HTML
<table>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>
<div>
<div></div>
</div>
</td>
<td>
<b></b>
<b></b>
<b></b>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
CSS
table{ width:100%; }
/*
This is the trick. There is a wrapping DIV with a position:relative which
holds the actual content DIV which is positioned Absolute, so it's width won't
affect it's own cell width's
*/
td > div{ position:relative; width:100%; height:20px; }
div div{
position:absolute;
background:green; height:100%; width:800px;
}
/* First TD has FIXED width */
td:nth-child(1){ width:100px; background:#EEE; }
/* Middle TD width takes the rest of the space */
td:nth-child(2){ overflow:hidden; }
/* Last TD has width depends on it's children's width */
td:nth-child(3){ white-space:nowrap; width:1%; }