[Hornet]

This doesn't quite fit into the category of "Photoshop", but it is to do with Imageready. Basically, how do you slice an interface so that it can easily be defined as tables, without everything in the middle sliding around everywhere?

Okay, that doesn't make sense... Basically, I've been asked to create an interface that has a panel of links in the left hand side, and the panel MUST stay still when the interface has content added to it. The right hand side has a ShoutBox, and I'm having similar problems making that stay put. It looks a bit like the attached sketch (Normal) when it's got very little in it. It then looks like the second sketch (called Wibble) when it's got content in it.

The red line is where I tried to stop it inflation by adding a table, but it will then cause problems unless whoever edits the page only put X number of lines in the top cell, which isn't ideal. I then tried to solve it by turning every image bar the shoutbox and button panel into cell backgrounds, but then the panel and it's buttons ended up split into slices all down the page! Finally, I tried putting the four different parts of the page into their own tables, in order to try and stop everything expanding when the middle cell was changed, but that caused a gap to appear between the four sections!

What can I do, either in ImageReady or the HTML side of things, to stop this happening?