Explicit div width settings - google viz tables

i recently ran into an issue with the <div> that contains data tables
on my website. The basic structure was:
<parent div.>
   <left hand column div sets width to 690, background color
specified>
    <viz table div no width specified, no inline style></div viz
table>
   </div left hand column>
                               <right side bar div width specific
230></div right side bar div>
</div parent>

I initially found that unless i removed the background color from the
parent div style- the viz table div made links in the side bar div un-
clickable.

The solution was to assign a specific width to the DIV that contains
the viz table. This prevented the viz table div from overlaying the
side bar div (even though the viz table width was itself specified -
the apparent real width of the viz table was the parent div width).

This was probably easily sorted out by someone with stronger CSS
skills - but it took me a bit of work to figure out.