"web page unavailable offline" if page has OL/UL/DL and style with "url" - bug?

I'm no HTML expert and not sure this is even a bug, or whose it is, or where to
report it. 

To summarize, I get "web page unavailable offline" errors for certain web pages
that are saved locally and then opened while offline. It appears to happen only
when:
- the page is opened using MSIE while offline
- AND the page/stylesheet has a style with an external "url" e.g.
{background-image: url(http://...) } 
- AND the page contains UL, OL, or DL elements

This came up after saving pages from W3C's HTML4.01 spec, starting at
http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/cover.html#minitoc and including
all 24 chapters and index pages under "Quick Table of Contents".

While offline I tried to open the saved pages using MSIE (ver 6.0.2900 for Win
XP SP2), but kept getting "Web page unavailable offline" errors.  Same errors
occurred with almost all these HTML4 spec pages except four of them:  chapters
20, 21, 22, and 23 - which displayed normally.  

None of my other browsers had a problem opening these pages offline: (Firefox
2.0.0.2 on Win XP SP2; and on Mac OSX 10.4: Firefox 2.0.0.3 and Safari 2.0.4.) 
None of my other locally saved web pages (from a variety of sources) get this
error when viewed offline, no matter which browser is used.

After investigating, the problem seemed to occur only under these conditions:
- the saved page is opened locally while NOT connected to the internet 
- AND the browser is MSIE 
- AND the  page links to style sheet W3C-REC.css (see next paragraph)
- AND the page contains either UL, OL, or DL elements. (The 4 pages that don't
get the error, don't contain any of these elements.)

The error went away if I edited W3C-REC.css and commented out the 2nd BODY
"item", i.e., 
/*     body {
        background-image: url(http://www.w3.org/StyleSheets/TR/logo-REC);
     } 
*/ 

The error also went away if the style sheet was left as-is but all OL, UL and
DL elements were commented out or their tags removed (ie, converted to "body
text").

Most likely an MSIE bug?  Or expected behavior?   Either way, seems strange
that it only happens
on pages containing UL, OL, and DL elements. Maybe it makes sense to the
experts.




       
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Received on Wednesday, 16 May 2007 20:40:04 UTC