Re: DIV overflow property

On Thu, 1 Sep 2005, Bruno Melloni wrote:
> 
> 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.

The appropriate mailing list depends on the specification, and is usually 
listed in the specification's Status of this Document section. In thecase 
of CSS2.1, you want www-style@w3.org.

http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/#status


> First, are overflow:auto and overflow:scroll part of the CSS standard, 
> or are they "extras" provided by vendors?

http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/visufx.html#overflow-clipping


> 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?

The meanings of percentages in cells is unfortunately undefined (whether 
or not 'overflow' is present).


> 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?

Generally, nested tables and CSS don't work well together. However, it is 
usually possible to get the effect you want without tables. For more 
information on this topic I recommend joining a developer mailing list 
like css-discuss:

  http://www.css-discuss.org/


> 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.

I'm an editor of the CSS2.1 specification.

It should be noted that Microsoft and Mozilla probably do agree with each 
other, it's just that one or the other (or both) has a bug in their 
browser that makes it misrender the page.

Also, browsers generally do not obey the specs when the page is missing 
the leading <!DOCTYPE> line. This is what the "quirks mode" reference was 
referring to.

HTH,
-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Friday, 2 September 2005 10:28:00 UTC