DIV overflow property

I could not find a W3C mailing list about the content of the CSS
standard, so I apologize if I am posting in the wrong mailing list, if
that is the case please point me to the correct mailing list.

My question is about interpreting the intent of a CSS clause, because I
have seen different behavior in Mozillia and IE.  Specifically, the
"overflow" property of the DIV.

First, are overflow:auto and overflow:scroll part of the CSS standard,
or are they "extras" provided by vendors?  I thought that it was part of
CSS, but I was told by a Mozilla developer that it was part of "quirk
mode", so I'm a bit confused.

Second, if they are part of the standard, if the cell where the DIV is
placed has a certain size (inherited from a series of "height=100%"
across the nesting), is a DIV with height="100%" that uses these values
of the overflow property supposed to limit the DIV's size to exactly
that size, and force scrolling?

Third, if the standard says that it is not supposed to restrict the DIV
to the size, is there any way supported by the standard to create a
complex page (multiple nested tables, and scrolling DIVs) where a
"copyright" line could be forced to be ALWAYS at the bottom of the
browser's visible space?

Fourth, I imagine that whoever replies to this question will be a peer
with better knowledge of the standard than me, not an official W3C
representative.  Is there any way to get an "official" answer as to what
the standard is trying to say?  I ask because if Microsoft and Mozilla
can't agree on an interpretation, the standard must obviously not be
100% clear in this area.

For an example of a page that exhibits this behavior and a much deeper
discussion, please see the following Bugzilla report: 
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=296576

Thanks,


Bruno Melloni
Director of Software Architecture
Akuratus Corporation
1333 N. Stemmons Fwy, Suite 110
Dallas, Texas 75207
Phone: 469.227.0920
Fax: 469.227.0967
bruno.melloni@akuratus.com
www.akuratus.com

Received on Friday, 2 September 2005 03:52:05 UTC