Abstract: An efficient method is described for laying out a table for display. The method may be used to display tables on a small footprint device, such as a smart cellular phone, a personal data assistant, a handheld computer, etc. Small footprint devices typically have smaller displays than other computing systems such as desktop computers. In one embodiment the method is employed to lay out HTML tables in a web browser running on a small footprint device.

Abstract: A system and method for efficient layout of a display table. Given a description of a table, such as a markup language description, the table description may be parsed and data structures representing the table description may be created. The table description data structures may then be “inspected”, in order to determine the possible size of the table. Once the table has been inspected, the table may then be “apportioned”, based on the results of the inspection step. That is, final dimensions may be assigned to the table. The table coordinates may then be “normalized”, which may involve converting relative table coordinates into absolute coordinates. Table layout optimizations are described, e.g., in order to efficiently handle various aspects of table layout, such as table cells that span multiple columns or rows, table cells that include nested tables, etc.