273709 - specific HTML-comments are displayed

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Core :: DOM: HTML Parser, defect)

Description

[Jens Kubieziel]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041111 Firefox/1.0 (Debian package 1.0-2)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041111 Firefox/1.0 (Debian package 1.0-2)

Assume there is a comment like:
<!-->This is a comment-->
in a HTML page. If you display that in FF, it shows the comment.

As far as I understand the HTML-Spec it is a normal comment, so it should not be
displayed.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.
Actual Results:  
I see a comment, which shouldn't displayed.

Expected Results:  
Don't see the comment.

Comment 1

[Mike Capp]

<!-->This is NOT a comment-->

<!--THIS is a comment-->

Comment 2

[Oliver Klee]

Over to Parser.

Comment 3

[Jean-Marc Desperrier]

The comment is only displayed when in quirks mode.

Change the DOCTYPE to "HTML 4.0.1 Transitional" so that Mozilla displays the
page in Standards compliance mode, and you wont see it again.

I think I remember such problems in quirks mode are not fixed, some older page
might depend on them. If you want a really predictable behaviour from Mozilla,
use a DOCTYPE that is rendered in standards mode.

Comment 4

[Bill Mason]

It breaks because you cannot have -- in the body of a comment.  That
opens/closes the comment. See
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/intro/sgmltut.html#idx-HTML

Comment 5

[Jens Kubieziel]

(In reply to comment #4)
> It breaks because you cannot have -- in the body of a comment.  That
> opens/closes the comment. See
> http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/intro/sgmltut.html#idx-HTML

There is no extra "--" inside that comment. According to that site "<!-->bla-->"
is a correct comment. However Jean-Marc advise is correct. If the browser is in
standards compliance mode, the comment disappers from the web page.