Strange browser differences in handling of COL styles

I've put a sample web page at

http://gavelcade.com/tests/font-styles-lost.html

that illustrates strange inconsistencies both among and within browsers in a
situation where I've applied styles to various parts of a table, including
COL elements (though that may or may not be the cause of the problem. Both
HTML and CSS pass validation.

I assigned the class "project-data-attribute" to the first of two columns in
tables (having class "project-data") like the following:

Grantee: Aardvark College
Project Director: Dr. Aaron Aramanian
Project Title: Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover


I want to specify the width of the first column and have it bolded. The
following rule is theoretically applicable.

table.project-data .project-data-attribute {
width: 10em;
font-weight: bold; }

I tested this in IE6, Netscape 7, Firefox 1.0, and Opera 7.54. The width is
set correctly in ALL of these browsers BUT only IE boldfaces the text!

Exploring further, I added two more properties to this rule:

table.project-data .project-data-attribute {
width: 10em;
background-color: #ee9;
color: #42c;
font-weight: bold; }

As with boldfacing, the text color is only applied by IE6. The text remains
black in the other browsers. Even more oddly, the background color *does*
show up in Firefox and Opera as well as in IE--but it doesn't show up in
Netscape.

Testing whether it was a somehow a specificity problem, I changed
..project-data-attribute to col.project-data-attribute, but that didn't make
any difference. I even tried making it less specific, removing the
table.project-data container selector, but no change in result.

Comments? Alternative approaches, short of applying the class to each of the
first-child TDs individually? Thanks.

--
Harlan Messinger
Remove the first dot from my e-mail address.
Veuillez ôter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel.

On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 14:02:12 -0500, Harlan Messinger
<h.messinger (AT) comcast (DOT) net> wrote:

Comments? Alternative approaches, short of applying the class to each of
the
first-child TDs individually? Thanks.

You can only use the background, border, visibility and width properties
on col and colgroup.

On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 14:28:56 -0500, Neal <neal413 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:

On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 14:02:12 -0500, Harlan Messinger
h.messinger (AT) comcast (DOT) net> wrote:

Comments? Alternative approaches, short of applying the class to each
of the
first-child TDs individually? Thanks.


You can only use the background, border, visibility and width properties
on col and colgroup.

Forgot to add: [http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1070385285&count=1]

"Neal" <neal413 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote

On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 14:28:56 -0500, Neal <neal413 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:

On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 14:02:12 -0500, Harlan Messinger
h.messinger (AT) comcast (DOT) net> wrote:

Comments? Alternative approaches, short of applying the class to each
of the
first-child TDs individually? Thanks.


You can only use the background, border, visibility and width properties
on col and colgroup.


Forgot to add: [http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1070385285&count=1]

OK, thank you very much. But--bah! At least my grief is shared.