223725 - float:left on a <td> breaks table rendering in 1.5/1.6a

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Core :: Layout: Floats, defect)

Description

[Andreas Lange]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007

The URL shows a page where the left column of a table is clipped after a few
pixels. The HTML boils down to this:
 <table border="1">
  <tr>
   <td style="
     float: left;
     overflow: hidden;
     width: 20%;
   ">
   abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvxyz
   </td>
   <td>
   aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
   </td>
  </tr>
 </table>

This renders a table where the left cell occupies very little space, the right
cell takes its 80%, and the space in between the cells doesn't really belong
anywhere. Removing the overflow attribute makes the cell content fill the area
for the left cell as it should, but the cell border keeps the same minimal size.

Mozilla 1.4 (and IE6) renders this as a complete table, the strange behaviour
appears in 1.5 and is currently in CVS head. 

I don't really know if this i correct CSS or not, but even if it weren't it
should not be able to break tables, should it?

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Andreas Lange]

Attachment: testcase

Comment 2

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

Our rendering looks pretty much correct.  'float' on table cells makes them no
longer be table cells (see http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/visuren.html#dis-pos-flo
).  Then we construct anonymous table cells according to the rules in
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/tables.html#anonymous-boxes .

Comment 3

[Andreas Lange]

Thanks for explaining why it is correct. Sorry for taking your time with an
invalid bug.

I'll go bash the webmaster! :)