new Tabbed Vertical Navigation Bar

  <html><head><title>common title prefix <!--$title?--></title>
  <style>
   a:link          { text-decoration : none ; color : #000080 ; }
   a:visited       { text-decoration : none ; color : #200060 ; }
   body            { background-color : white ; }
   .body           { background-color : white ; }
   .navtable       { background-color : #E0F0FF ; }
   .navsect        { background-color : #F8F8FF ; }
   .navlist        { width : 9em ; volume : soft ; }
   H3              { text-align : right ; }
  </style>
  </head><body>

  <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="4" width="100%" class="navtable"><tr>
  <td class="navsect" align="center"><a href="site.html"><b><!--$selected--></b></a></td>
  <td class="navsect" align="center"><a href="index.html">Overview</a></td>
  <td class="navsect" align="center"><a href="examples.html">Examples</a></td>
  </tr><tr><td rowspan="2">  <small><small>&nbsp;</small></small>
  </td><td               colspan="2"></td></tr>
  <tr><td class="body"   colspan="2"></td></tr>

  <tr valign="top"><td class="navlist">
  <hr><a href="index.html">Overview</a>
  <br>-<a href="intro.html">Introduction</a>
  <br>-<a href="where.html">Related Work</a>
  <hr><a href="examples.html">Examples</a>
  <br>-<a href="loremipsum.html">Lorem Ipsum</a>
  <br>-<a href="nietzsche.html">Nietzsche</a>
      <hr><a href="impressum.html">Impressum</a>
  <br><a href="site.html">sitemap</a>
  </td><td class="body" colspan="2">

  </td></tr></table></body></html>

While looking on these webpages with a Microsoft Internet Explorer I had to notice some differences - foremost the the tabbed style was broken since the <tr colspan="3"><td></td></tr> did turn out to be rendered with a single-pixel height. This is violating the `cellpadding="4"` given in the table head. Furthermore, using a little non breakable spacer turns out making the tabb ruler (below the actual tabbs) too big and destroying the look.

Anyway, here is a new variant that uses a little trick - for the tabbed lower ruler we draw in fact two table rows - the leftmost cell(s) are combined via rowspan="2" and filled with a little (non erasable) whitespace. The righthand cells below the tabbs are not combined (only horizontally via colspan="2") whereas the upper part is drawn in tabb color and lower part is drawn in body color.

That has a number of advantages - first of all, the tabb ruler is really half the size of the spacer. Secondly, the body area is set off by half a line as well - which is a good idea from a typography point of view. And techniqually we are easier with the "colspan"s which now take each the exact same value - in the presented example always colspan="2" matching exactly the number of visible tabbs above (minus the leftmost area atop the vertical navigation bar).

- common title prefix - lorem ipsum -