197306 - form elements enclosed in div overwrite the edge of the div in narrow browser window

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Core :: Layout: Form Controls, defect)

Description

[Lori Brown]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826

View the URL above in Mozilla (I am using 1.3 or so.) Slowly make the browser
window narrower. The form elements and the fieldset that encloses them are
inside of a div. The form elements overwrite the edge of the enclosing fieldset
and div. Why does it do this? Shouldn't the size of the form elements set a sort
of minimum width for the containing fieldset and div? It looks crummy to have
the form elements sticking out the side of the containing elements.

Don't tell me this is not a bug, but a feature. I will disagree!

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create a form.
2. Enclose the form in a fieldset, or a div, or both. Set the width of the
fieldset or div w/ a percentage. Give the enclosing elements a style w/ a
background color, so that the offending behavior is more evident.
3. View the page in a narrow browser window.

Actual Results:  
The form elements stick out of the div / fieldset that enclose them.

Expected Results:  
THe width of the form elements should establish a minimum width below which the
div or fieldset will not shrink. Containing elements should fully enclose
elements that enclose them.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

> Don't tell me this is not a bug, but a feature. I will disagree!

It's not a "feature", it's a conformance requirement for CSS2.  Any other
behavior would violate the CSS2 layout model.

> Shouldn't the size of the form elements set a sort of minimum width for the
> containing fieldset and div? 

Normally it would, but the site has explicitly overridden the margins of the
<fieldset>.  This means that the margins cannot become negative, thus that the
width of the fieldset cannot become larger than the width of its parent (which
is constrained by the width of the browser window, since the site has made no
provisions to the contrary).

Simply not setting margins on the <fieldset> would "fix" this problem.  So would
setting a min-width on the fieldset, if that is what's desired.