Different table problem

How do you properly "force open" a table? I've got two different situations but they both deal with the same main issue.

First, if you look at this page you'll see the footer is way up high rather than at the bottom. I know that filling it up with content will fix this but that becomes harder when trying to plan for larger screen resolutions. How do I make that middle row open up to 100% of what's left after the top and bottom have their fixed heights? When I tried height="100%" it opened up that section to 100% of the screen height PLUS the height of the header and footer so it forced an unnecessary side scroll bar. I tried table height="100%" and that worked great but only in IE and it wouldn't validate either. What's the proper way to make my footer go to the bottom?

Second is my front/spalsh page here. I have a middle row that is a fixed height of 313px. What I want to do is make the top and bottom "letterbox effect" rows to be equally split of the remaining screen height. In other words, make the middle section always be 'valigned middle'. You'll see what I mean if you look at it in 1024x768. Same as before, that if I try using something like 40%/313px/40% it makes unnecessary side scollbar. Any solutions to this related situation?