Colspan in IE7/8 not respected

Question

The DOM looks like this:

<table>
  <tr>
    <td>a</td>...<td>g</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td colspan="3">
      <table>
        ...
      </table>
    </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td></td>...<td></td>
  </tr>
</table>

Any idea why this wouldn't work in IE? I tried setting width:auto on the TD holding the inner table, and table-layout:fixed isn't viable because the tabular data is generated dynamically.

What could be going wrong?

Currently, the table only fills the first column, and it will not span.

Update: EXAMPLE

http://stefankendall.com/files/example.html

Answer 1

Use colSpan, not colspan

Answer 2

The only thing that comes to mind is that you may have to fill the columns with something for them to get rendered in IE.

<td>&nbsp;</td>