Re: Testing THEAD support on user agents (Test file, Linux results)

Sorry to interrupt, but ...

"Ian B. Jacobs" <ij@w3.org> wrote:

> At today's teleconference [1], we talked about support
> for THEAD in HTML user agents. The context: Do user agents
> support the rendering where THEAD rows are fixed on the screen
> while other data cells are scrolled by.
> 
> To test this, I have published a test table [2] that uses
> THEAD for the first row (the one starting "Rows").

I think your expectation is wrong.  "11.2.3 Row groups: the THEAD,
TFOOT, and TBODY elements" of HTML 4 says as follows [3]:

    Table rows may be grouped into a table head, table foot, and one
    or more table body sections, using the THEAD, TFOOT and TBODY
    elements, respectively. This division enables user agents to
    support scrolling of table bodies independently of the table head
    and foot.

Note that this division *enables* user agents to support scrolling.
It doesn't mean TBODY must always be scrollable when THEAD is present.
HTML markup specifies table head - body - foot structure, and that's
it.  If you want specific presentation, use style sheets.  Your test
file doesn't attach any style sheets, so it seems quite natural to
me that user agents don't make tables scrollable.

> I also tried using 'position:fixed' on the THEAD element
> for user agents that support CSS fixed positioning. However,
> since fixed positioning pulls an element out of the flow,
> the result (at least on Opera) is that the THEAD row is
> not formatted the same as the other (TBODY) rows. So while
> the THEAD row remains fixed on the screen, the cells in
> the other rows don't line up with it, so this approach is
> not helpful.

What you want is to make TBODY scrollable, isn't it?  Then don't
try to do something for THEAD.  Something like

  TBODY { height: 10em; overflow: auto; }

would enable user agents to make TBODY scrollable when the height
of the table body is more than 10em, for example.  It should at least
work with Gecko-based user agents.

> [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2002AprJun/0192
> [2] http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/2002/06/thead-test

[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/tables.html#h-11.2.3

Regards,
-- 
Masayasu Ishikawa / mimasa@w3.org
W3C - World Wide Web Consortium

Received on Friday, 14 June 2002 12:01:33 UTC