Re: How is it possible to devise such a feeble system?

>If that was the case, then if I was to apply a style to the body
>element, and give it a background color, then I would only see the
>background color on some of the page (for small documents), correct?
>But this is not the case.  Instead, the background color is applied to
>the entire viewport.  The body takes up the entire viewport (by
>default).
>

That's true Peter, but that is a result of the browser not complying with the 
CSS 2 spec.  According to the spec, if you supply a value of 'auto', or no 
value at all for width for HTML and BODY, HTML and therefore BODYT would occupy 
the entire width of the viewport.  If the value provided for height for HTML 
and BODY were 'auto', or no value provided at all, the height would be zero if 
they contained no content, or whatever the height of the content is if they do. 
 What Chris told you would be true by default, but if you specify a height 
 value of 100% for HTML and BODY, the BODY will occupy the entire height of the 
 viewport.  And like I said, what you're describing as the default is the non-
 conforming default behavior of the browser, contrary to the CSS 2 spec.

Received on Wednesday, 24 October 2001 13:20:45 UTC