308403 - Constraining table cells with max-height/max-width does not work

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Layout: Tables, defect)

Description

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

(spawned off from bug 307866)

Constraining table cells with max-height/max-width does not work

Comment 1

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

Attachment: Testcase: max-height

Comment 2

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

Attachment: Testcase: max-width

Comment 3

[richardtallent]

According to the CSS2 spec (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/visudet.html), "max-height", "min-height", "max-width", and "min-width" apply to "all elements except non-replaced inline elements and table elements."

Now comes the fun part: what is a "table element"? The CSS2 table spec (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/tables.html), section 17.2.1, paragraph 1 mentions the phrase "table element" in reference to *any* element styled with a "display" of any of the table values (table, table-row, table-cell, etc.).

I don't know that my reading is correct, but if it is, HTML's default stylesheet sets TD elements to be "display:table-cell", so they would theoretically count as "table elements," and, thus, would not have a "max-height" property.

By default, tables get their height from their TRs, which in turn get their height from the TDs, which then get their height from the content (IOW, all "height:auto"). I think you can *simulate* what you want by setting the TD in question to have "height:100%", then create a DIV within the TD with "height:100%; max-height:[whatever]; overflow:auto;" for your content. The content is constrained by the DIV, and the DIV sets the height of the TD.

Comment 4

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

You're reading an old spec, CSS 2.1 is what we want to implement, it says:

http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/visudet.html#min-max-widths
"'min-width' and 'max-width' ....
  Applies to: all elements but non-replaced inline elements, table rows,
  and row groups"

http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/visudet.html#min-max-heights
"'min-height' and 'max-height' ...
  Applies to:  	all elements but non-replaced inline elements, table columns,
  and column groups"

which is the same as for 'width'/'height' respectively BTW.


(CSS3 box model also includes rows/cols/groups, but I would not rely to much
on that working draft at this point).
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-css3-box-20021024/#the-min-width
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-css3-box-20021024/#the-width

Comment 5

[Bernd]

the css 3 box currently does not differ from CSS 2.1
http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-box/#min-max

Comment 6

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

These days, as far as I can tell, our rendering on the attached testcases is 100% consistent with Chromium/WebKit. i.e. in the attached testcases, I think we all ignore max-height on table cells; and we agree on ignoring max-width in some specific cases and honoring it in others.

Given this 100%-interop on this bug's testcases and the status of table-layout as a sort of legacy feature with tons of built-up content out there in the wild, we're probably compat-constrained in our ability to further-change behavior on this, in pursuit of theoretical-purity here. Hence, I'm closing this broader "max-width / max-height" bug as WONTFIX.

If there are specific cases where we're not interoperable, OR where we're interoperable but there's another clearly-better behavior and we can get buy-in from other browsers (so as not to create compat pain for ourselves), then we can track those in their own specific bugs.