Re: CSS3 box height %

On Tue, 12 Aug 2003, Bryan C. Mills wrote:
>
> Most people would expect "height: 100%" to cause a box to extend from
> the top of the containing block to the bottom of the containing block;
> this is also how Internet Explorer 6 renders it in CSS2 (in violation of
> the spec).

It's hard to tell what IE6 does exactly since it doesn't correctly support
'height' and 'width', treating them more like 'min-height' and
'min-width'. So comparisons with IE6 are generally to be avoided here.


> Rather than defining percentages to be 'auto' for blocks whose parents
> have height 'auto', I think percentages should be treated as the
> percentage of the 'auto' height of the containing block or 100% of the
> intrinsic height of the block, whichever is greater.

Unfortunately, the height of the containing block is dependent on the
height of the element, so this would introduce an infinite loop:

   <a>
     <b> 1 </b>
     <b> 2 </b>
   </a>

   * { displap: block; }
   a { height: auto; }
   b { height: 75%; }

...what height is the <a> element?

-- 
Ian Hickson                                      )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
"meow"                                          /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
http://index.hixie.ch/                         `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Tuesday, 12 August 2003 13:02:57 UTC