line-height messing up tables?

[goma]

I've been toying with a layout all day, using DW to make the mockup. Usually I recode the tables in hoemsite or just use DIVs. But I decided to use table on this one.

Anyway, I had the left menu and banner / head done and when I put up the dummy text in a cell (right in the middle of the "content area", with a lot of vertical and horizontal space), I decided to use some CSS and assigned 11px Verdana and adjusted the line-height.

I was surprised to see the left menu stretch despite all the gifs in it. So I surmised that the line-height in the adjacent content cell messes up the table height. But even if I make a separate table for the content and another for the left menu, the menu still comes apart.

I want to keep using tables in this one for some strange reason (although I could go DIVs) so I'd like to know if there's a way around this. How do you keep the table/ tables intact despite messing with the line-height, which presumably adds to the height of the cells?

[creole]

Do you have & nbsp;s in the empty cells? If you do then it's likely that those are what is messing your layout. Keep in mind that while it's invisible it's still a "character" (a blank space). If you resize the text in your browser the space gets bigger, the same goes for line-height.

[goma]

strange.... I shut down for the night without solving the problem or reading Creole's reply. the last I did was put the menu in another table and keep the content to another table but that didn't solve it coz the menu still came apart.

But when I checked the page again today, it looks ok. hmm...