258894 - Layout on some websites incl slashdot.org is sometimes wrong - resizing font up and then down fixes it every time

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 217527

(Core :: Layout, defect)

Description

[Ian Batterbee]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040803
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040803

Firstly, I can't believe I'm the only person who sees this, but I've searched
for various terms, including slashdot.org, and can't come up with a matching
bug, so... here goes.

When reading slashdot.org, I freqently see the middle column (the one with the
story in it) located too far to the left, overwriting the content of the left
column (containing username, prefs, subscribe, journal, logout etc etc)

By using ctrl-mousewheel up then down (or down then up), and resizing the font
to something else and back again, the left edge of the middle column moves
slightly to the right to leave a small whitespace gap between it and the left
column.

I know problems with CSS can leave columns overlapping each other, but the
reason I believe this is a problem with Mozilla because the document source or
style sheet doesn't change when I resize the font, and changing the font size up
and then back to the original setting should not result in a change in layout.

Hitting F5 to reload usually results in the column being moved back to the
original location, but not always.

This happens on all slashdot pages.. most obviously on the main page. I have
experienced this problem on multiple computers running various versions of
mozilla and/or firefox, including FF 0.9.3. Both browsers exhibit the same problem.

By positioning my mouse cursor at the exact edge of the columns, I determined
that the left edge of the 'story' column moves to the right, but the right hand
edge of that same column does not move at all. This results in the column
becoming narrower, which then forces the wording inside it be be re-wrapped (if
that's the right terminology)

I'll attach images of the before and after in a moment.


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to slashdot.org
2. Notice the columns overlapping
3. Resize the font and then resize it back again and watch the problem fix itself


Expected Results:  
Changing one variable (the text zoom / font size), then returning it to the
original value, without at any time reloading the document should not alter the
way the document is rendered.

Comment 1

[Ian Batterbee]

Attachment: http://www.slashdot.org

Comment 2

[Ian Batterbee]

Attachment: After resizing up and down - note the new whitespace between the columns

Comment 3

[Bill Mason]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 217527 ***