Problem with HTML table

1

I have a problem with this site in Internet Explorer (works perfectly in Firefox)… In IE i’m getting a blank part before the image (as if the table is too long)… I can’t figure out what’s wrong with it… was working well up to a couple of hours ago…

site can be viewed at: http://matthewzammit.com/community/includes/header.php

Thanks.

Matt

this is the source code:



[ ... PHP includes removed ]

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
    <title><?php echo $title ?></title>
    <!-- <link href="../apt_style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> -->
    <link href="<?php echo $dir.'community_style.css' ?>" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
</head>

<body>
<!-- CONTAINER table -->
<table width="980" bgcolor="#ffffff" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
<tr>
<td>

<!-- HEADER table -->
<table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
    <!-- top navigation    COMMUNITY _ FOUNDATION _ YF -->
    <tr>
        <td bgcolor="#000000">
            <table width="450" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
                <tr>
                    <td height="30" width="10"></td>
                    <td align="left" class="textWhite" width="100"><b>The Foundation</b></td>
                    <td width="10"></td>
                    <td align="left" class="textWhite" width="100" ><b>The Community</b></td>
                    <td width="10"></td>
                    <td align="left" class="textWhite"  width="100"><b>The Fellowship</b></td>
                    <td width="10"></td>
                    <? 
                    if ($theSentry->checkLogin(2)) { ?>
                        <td class="textWhite" width="100">
                            <a class="textWhite" href= "<?php echo $dir.'welcome.php' ?>"><b>UPDATE SITE</b></a>
                        </td>
                    <? } ?>
                    <td>&nbsp;</td>
                </tr>
            </table>
        </td>
        
        <td bgcolor="#000000" align="right">
            <table width="530" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
                <tr>
                    <td valign="middle" align="right" class="textWhite" width="500"> 
                            <?php 
                                if ($theSentry->checkLogin(10)) {
                                    echo 'welcome '.$_SESSION['user'].' :: <a class="text" href="'.$dir.'cmsadmin/login.php?action=logout">Logout</a>';}
                                else  { ?>
                                    <form name="form1" method="post" action="../cmsadmin/login.php" class="textWhite">
                                            Username: <input type="text" name="user" class="text"/> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
                                            Password: <input type="password" name="pass" class="text" /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
                                            <input name="Login" type="submit" id="Login" value="Login" class="text"/>
                                    </form>
                            <?    } ?>
                    </td>
                    <td align="right" width="20"><!-- this is used only as a margin --></td> 
                </tr>
            </table>
        </td>
    </tr>
    
    <!-- image --> 
    <tr>
        <td height="120" colspan="2" class="text"><img src="../images/header_alpha.jpg" alt="front image" /></td>
    <tr>

    
    <!-- navigation links -->
    <tr bgcolor="#000000" >
        <td align="right" width="980" colspan="2" > 
            <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
                <tr>
                    <!-- header links --> 
                    <td height="20" width="20" ></td>
                    <td width="30" ><a class="text" href="<?php echo $dir.'index.php' ?>">HOME</a></td>
                    <td width="20"></td>
                    <td width="50" ><a class="text" href="<? echo $dir.'viewSection.php?section=2' ?>">ARTICLES</a></td>
                    <td width="20"></td>
                    <td width="28" ><a class="text" href="<? echo $dir.'viewSection.php?section=1' ?>">NEWS</a></td>
                    <td width="20"></td>
                    <td width="100"><a class="text" href="mailto:mail@matthewzammit.com">CONTACT US</a></td>
                    <td align="right" width="20"></td> 
                </tr>
            </table>
        </td>
    </tr>

</table>
<!-- CLOSE HEADER table -->



<!-- each part now opens its OWN CONTAINER TABLE and closes itself... e.g. index, leftpanel... -->



<!-- add this in footer.php ... added here for testing of header -->
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>