align 4 divs in parallel where one of the divs is empty - css

Question

I'm a newbie with html so please be patient.
I'm trying to align 4 divs in parallel where the first,third and fourth div are static,the second div is empty and i need it to occupy the remain place e.g "width:auto".
I don't want to use table to solve the problem.
Is there a way to solve it using divs?
HTML:
<div class="container">
<div class="content" >
first
</div>
<div class="empty">
</div>
<div class="content">
third
</div>
<div class="content">
fourth
</div>
</div>
CSS:
.container{
strong textwidth:1020px;
height:40px;
}
.content{
position:relative;
background-color:#2cc2e7;
height:40px;
width:142px;
float:right;
margin-right:5px;
}
.empty{
background-color:#f1d486;
height:40px;
width:auto;
margin-right:5px;
}

Answer 1

You will need to change the order of the elements:
<div class="container">
<div class="first content">first</div>
<div class="content">third</div>
<div class="content">fourth</div>
<div class="empty"></div>
</div>
And then just float the first one to the left, other two to the right, and the .empty one, don't float it but set an overflow to auto —or hidden.
.content {
float: right;
width: 142px;
}
.first {
float: left;
}
.empty {
overflow: auto;
}
http://jsfiddle.net/GTbnz/

Answer 2

If you are prepared to add below the empty div then you could use the following:
<div class="empty">
</div>
with a style sheet of:
.container {
width:1020px;
height:40px;
display:table;
width:100%;
}
.container div {
height:40px;
display:table-cell;
}
.content {
background-color:#2cc2e7;
width:142px;
max-width:142px;
}
.empty {
background-color:#f1d486;
}
This was whichever of the 4 div's has a class 'empty' will auto-expand to fill the available space and the other div sizes will all be 142 px.