A table with auto width only expands enough to accomodate its content
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html> <head> <title> table with auto width </title> <style type='text/css' media='all'> table { width: auto; border: thin solid black; } </style> </head> <body> <table> <tr> <td> A table with auto width only expands enough to accomodate its content. </td> </tr> </table> </body> </html>