Re: Block element width behavior

Float the div.  <div style="float:left">...

dave


On Friday, March 14, 2003, at 02:26 PM, Stuart Ballard wrote:

>
> This message may be off-topic, but whether it is or not depends on 
> what the answer to the question is. If the answer is "you can already 
> do it", then it's off-topic because it's a "howto" question. If the 
> answer is "you can't do it" then it's on-topic because it's a 
> suggestion of something to add to CSS... How's that for an existential 
> quandry? ;)
>
> Anyway, the question is this (using a generic unversioned kind of HTML 
> for my examples)
>
> When I write something like this:
>
> <table style="background-color: red">
>   <tr>
>     <td>
>       My Cell
>     </td>
>   </tr>
> </table>
>
> then, per the default styling rules in just about every browser (and 
> as far as I can tell the CSS2 spec backs this up, referring to things 
> like Minimum Content Widths etc), the red background (and hence the 
> table) is only the size it needs to be to fit the width of the text 
> "My cell", plus applicable margins, padding and border.
>
> On the other hand, if I write something like this:
>
> <div style="background-color: red">
>   My Div
> </div>
>
> then, per the default styling rules (and again the spec seems to back 
> this up), the red background is the full width of the containing block 
> (which if I'm not already inside something else, means the full width 
> of the browser window).
>
> I don't object to this default behavior, but the problem is that as 
> far as I can tell there's NO WAY to style a div to behave like the 
> table cell does by default. Which forces me to use horribly 
> un-semantic tables for simple blocks that don't need any tabular 
> behavior except for the ability to calculate their width based on 
> their content.
>
> "width: auto" is apparently equivalent to the initial value and 
> computes to (effectively) 100%.
>
> "margin-right: auto" apparently (by the algorithm described in CSS2 
> 10.3.3) gets treated as if it were zero if width is auto.
>
> "width: 0" causes the content to be compressed to its minimum possible 
> width, which isn't necessarily the same as it's preferred size (in my 
> example, it would cause a linebreak to be inserted between "My" and 
> "Div").
>
> "min-width: 0" has no effect because the computed value isn't 
> constrained by the minimum width.
>
> My question is therefore, is there any way to get the behavior I want 
> based on current CSS specs, and if not, is there any plan to provide 
> this behavior in future versions of CSS?
>
> Thanks,
> Stuart.
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Stuart Ballard, Programmer
> NetReach - Internet Solutions
> (215) 283-2300, ext. 126
> http://www.netreach.com/
>

Received on Friday, 14 March 2003 18:10:31 UTC