>>If you can live with fixed percentage width columns, as in my example, the "tweaking" only needs to be done once. If you find a better method of having fixed headers, I'd be glad to know.
>
>Len,
>
>The fixed percentage column widths is exactly my problem. I'll keep trying and if I find anything that may be of interest/use to you I'll keep you posted.
>
>Isn't it strange that there is hardly any information on how to solve this "problem"? I've been scouring the web and can't find much on the topic.
>
>Mike

I don't know of a good solution to this problem. Another issue with large tables is that browsers will not render them until the closing table tag. This can cause long delays as well. Another solution (not a good one) is to break up the data into multiple tables where each table fills a page (screen). The major problem with this is that columns from one table to the next do not line up. Setting a column width can minimize this effect. You don't have a fixed header but you at least keep a header visible on the screen. You can also flush data to the client after rendering every 20-30 pages to give the perception of faster response on large data sets.

Another approach to consider is downloading a page at a time to the client. The downside of this is the required server post back for each page.

If you only need to support the newer browsers then you could consider downloading the data as an XML data island and using client side scripting to handle populating pages into a table. Not a simple solution but an elegant one.