thanks, that helps. I was doing a mistake of specifying the field id where I was using the colspan; which I think was asking the function to take its width. That appears to be working now.
Now, my next issue I want to specify td height. I don't see the height property here:
http://www.jeasyui.com/documentation/index.php#I want to specify the td height to the place where I colspan. Something like:
<th colspan="4" style="height: 100px">Item Details</th>