340735 - Style in Caption with tabindex attribute is lost when clicked

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Layout, defect)

Description

[Esquifit]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; ca; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; ca; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4

A table Caption containing a 'tabindex="0"' attribute behaves inconsistently with respect to styles before and after clicking on it.






Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create an HTML table with a CAPTION tag; add the attribute tabindex="0" to the CAPTION tag.
2.
Case a. Make the Caption text inherit its style from the TABLE tag.  
Case b. Make the Caption text inherit its style from the BODY tag. 

3.Click on the Caption text.


Actual Results:  
1.a Before clicking, the style is applied to both Caption text and Table body.  After clicking on the Caption text the style is lost, but only for the caption, the table body remains styled.

1.b Before clicking, only color information is taken into account, font style is ignored.  After clicking on the caption text, all styles are applied to it.

Expected Results:  
Font sytles should be constistently the same before and after clicking on the Caption text.

According to the official HTML specification 

1)http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#adef-tabindex:

The following elements support the tabindex attribute: A, AREA, BUTTON, INPUT, OBJECT, SELECT, and TEXTAREA.

2)http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/appendix/notes.html#notes-invalid-docs:

[this specification] does not define how conforming user agents handle general error conditions, including how user agents behave when they encounter elements, attributes, attribute values, or entities not specified in this document.

In this sense, the observed behaviour would no be a bug.  However, according to the same document:

[...]to facilitate experimentation and interoperability between implementations of various versions of HTML, we recommend the following behavior:
[...]
    * If a user agent encounters an attribute it does not recognize, it should ignore the entire attribute specification (i.e., the attribute and its value).


Irrespective of this recommendation, I think that, at a minimum, styles should be consistently applied or ignored altogether before and after clicking on the Caption text.

Comment 1

[Esquifit]

Attachment: Caption inherits style from TABLE

Comment 2

[Esquifit]

Attachment: Caption inherits style from BODY

Comment 3

[Daniel.S]

Both testcases work correctly in Fx3, +

Reporter, about tabindex: Although not allowed by HTML 4.01 to be used on arbitrary elements, this exact behaviour allowed browser vendors to improve accessibility.
That's one of the reasons the forthcoming HTML 5 will allow tabindex on many (if not all, I'm unsure) elements.