I remember running into similar issues when trying to prettify some ebay listings (using Frontpage), and IIRC the solution was to set the left column to a fixed width, and the right column to a percentage of the remaining width. In the FR context there wouldn't need to be the left column (I just note it because it drove me crazy trying to balance the two, prevent the left one (which had the photo) from resizing, and prevent the right column from getting a horiz scrollbar, which as you pointed out, sucks.)