373382 - Poor Support of "<span>" element.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 34415

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Woody Barrett]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2) Gecko/20070219 Firefox/2.0.0.2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2) Gecko/20070219 Firefox/2.0.0.2

Some, but not all of the properties of the <span> element are implemented in Firefox.

A programmer should be able to control basic properties of the <span> element such as width, height, etc., in the same manner as with the <div> element.  This would permit the programmer to more easily format a web page without resorting to tables (which is bad programming practice) or the CSS float and position properties (which can be difficult, complicated and lead to undesirable side-effects).

For example, setting the width and height property of any <span> element has no effect on the element, which seems to be dependent on the font-size and padding properties for its height, and dependent on the padding property and the number of characters within the element for its width.

A programmer should be able to create a table-like display using <span> and <div> elements.  For example:

<style type="text/css">
   span{width: 2in; text-align: center;}
</style>
<div>
   <span>xxx</span>
   <span>xx</span>
   <span>xxxx</span>
</div>

The following code should arrange the data in three columns, each 2 inches in width.  It does so in IE, but not in Firefox.

There are other properties not implemented in the <span> element, but the width and height properties are the most basic and necessary.

I find that your implementation of the <span> element renders the element almost useless, except for formatting text in some minor applications.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Put the <span> element in a document.
2.Attempt to control the width or height of the element.
3.Watch it not work.
Actual Results:  
<span> element resists all attempts to change width or height.

Expected Results:  
<span> element should have resized to specified height and width.