Being clear about clear

Browser implementations of the clear property seem to massively differ
from the CSS 2 specification, which seems to sort-of contradict
itself. It first says at 9.5.2[1]:

  "This property indicates which sides of an element's box(es) may
  not be adjacent to an earlier floating box."

But then goes on to say for the "both" value:

  "The generated box is moved below all floating boxes of earlier
  elements in the source document."

So which should it be? Just adjacent boxes or all previous floating
boxes? From my tests, both IE6 and Gecko only clear adjacent boxes. Opera
sometimes does and sometimes doesn't.

Only clearly adjacent boxes seems to make infinitely more sense to me,
so may I suggest the wording be changed in CSS 2.1?


 [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/visuren.html#flow-control

 
Cheers
--
Tom Gilder
http://tom.me.uk/

Received on Tuesday, 19 November 2002 17:55:20 UTC