title: How to foce min-width on empty div
body: <p>I'm trying to display some 'aligned' text -- and I've decided to use a 6 column layout, except it isn't really a column layout because each row can have a cell (like in tables) span multiple columns. However, I'm doing this using   only. </p>
  
  <p>My CSS looks like below, and it works as long as there is content. However, it fails if there is no content. Please help!</p>
  
  <p>
          .p_row { 
              width: 900px; 
              padding-top: 0px;
              clear: left; 
          }</p>
  
  <pre><code>    .p_col1 { min-width: 140px; }
      .p_col2 { min-width: 280px; }
      .p_col3 { min-width: 420px; }
      .p_col4 { min-width: 560px; }
      .p_col5 { min-width: 700px; }
      .p_col6 { min-width: 840px; }
  
  
      .labeldesc {
          display: inline-block; 
          float: left;
          text-align: left; 
          vertical-align: top; 
          margin-right: 0px; 
      }
  
      .field {
          display: inline;  
          float: left;
          text-align: left; 
          vertical-align: top; 
          margin-right: 0px; 
      }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>  </p>
  
  <p>Sample data:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;div class="Row Container"&gt;
      &lt;div class="p_row"&gt;
          &lt;div class="p_col1 labeldesc"&gt;Condition:&lt;/div&gt;
          &lt;div class="p_col1 field"&gt;@clinicalCondition.Description&lt;/div&gt;
          &lt;div class="p_col1 labeldesc"&gt;Is Chronic:&lt;/div&gt;
          &lt;div class="p_col1 field"&gt;@clinicalCondition.ChronicIndicatorString&lt;/div&gt;
          &lt;div class="p_col1 labeldesc"&gt;Date&lt;/div&gt;
          &lt;div class="p_col1 field"&gt;@clinicalCondition.DateString&lt;/div&gt;
      &lt;/div&gt;
  
      &lt;div class="p_row"&gt;
          &lt;div class="p_col1 labeldesc"&gt;Comment:&lt;/div&gt;
          &lt;div class="p_col5 field"&gt;@clinicalCondition.Comments&lt;/div&gt;
      &lt;/div&gt;
  &lt;/div&gt;   
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>In the above, I want all the labels/fields to align, but if one of the field values is string.empty, then the min-width does not work. If I remove the float: left, it also doesn't work. And the display: inline-block doesn't seem to do anything, nor does the min-width.</p>
  
  <p>Any help would be greatly appreciated! I'm using both FireFox and IE, and no luck.</p>