36167 - Setting style property to empty string should remove style

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 9876

(Core :: DOM: CSS Object Model, defect, P3)

Description

[Dan203]

If you can try this example in both IE4+ and Mozilla! (I'm using M14)

As you can see by the example when you set an elements style using 
element.style.property = 'value' and then set that same property to an empty 
string using element.style.property = '' the style remains at the value set by 
the previous call. In IE4+ however this causes the style to be removed, and 
normal cascading rules take over turning it back to the style value set in the 
upper level style sheet. Now I know DOM2 defines a removeProperty function that 
would fix this problem, but I think most people would epect that setting a value 
to an empty string via JS would have the same effect as setting it to an empty 
string in the actual style sheet.

Comment 1

[Jesse Ruderman]

what would happen if the yellow had been inherited from another div or from the 
default color for body text?

Comment 2

[John Keiser (jkeiser)]

Wanted to note a little more here: when you mouse in it changes from yellow to 
red, but it seems like when you mouse out it should change back to yellow 
(since it gets set to '').  Short discussion at 
http://x28.deja.com/viewthread.xp?
thitnum=5&CONTEXT=956115150.703397889&back=netscape.public.mozilla.dom

Comment 3

[Pierre Saslawsky]

We are going to implement the functionality of removing style but we are also 
going to follow what the spec says about it (http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/CR-DOM-
Level-2-20000307/css.html#CSS-CSSStyleDeclaration) which means that it will be 
done through removeProperty(). See bug 9876 for more info.

We are also going to accept an empty string in SetProperty() as an equivalent to 
RemoveProperty() because it's syntactically correct. It means that the two 
declarations below will be identical:
     this.style.setProperty('color', '', '')
     this.style.removeProperty('color')

IE's behavior is plain wrong: a CSS declaration should not accept an empty 
string. Besides, the example provided by the reporter only works in WinIE5, not 
in the new MacIE5 although MacIE5 may also accepts empty strings as in:
    <STYLE>
    .blah { color: red; }
    .blah:hover {color:;}  /* This is wrong! */
    </STYLE>
    <A CLASS=blah href="qwe">This is blah</A>

Marking duplicate of 9876.


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 9876 ***

Comment 4

[Matt Perry]

Verified duplicate.