486524 - <COL align="..."> property is ignored

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 915

(Core :: Layout: Tables, defect)

Description

[Uqbar]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.8) Gecko/2009032712 Ubuntu/8.10 (intrepid) Firefox/3.0.8
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.8) Gecko/2009032712 Ubuntu/8.10 (intrepid) Firefox/3.0.8

Accordingly to the standard (http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/index/attributes.html), both the "width" and the "align" attributes can be defined into a <COL> tag. Please note, they are not even deprected!
After all, this is one of the reasons why the <COL> tag exists at all: to define properties related to columns.
What instead happens with Firefox 3 is that the "width" property gets honoured and rendered, while the "align" is not.
I'm not talking about CSS, but rather about markup itself, aka HTML 4.01.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Point the browser to the provided URL
2. Note the same text alignment of the text in all the columns.
3. Do the same with Internet Explorer v7
Actual Results:  
The "align" properties are not honoured, thus yielding to a default alignment for all columns, "left" in my case.

Expected Results:  
The three columns showing text aligned accordingly to the property definition: right, center, left.

This is not the same as https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=470511 or https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=285184 as this is not CSS, but HTML.
Anyway, IMHO it's weird that CSS doesn't support something that is in the markup.

Comment 1

[Uqbar]

Attachment: HTML code triggering the bug

Comment 2

[Uqbar]

Attachment: The HTML code rendered by Microsoft Internet Explorer v7

Comment 3

[Uqbar]

Please, give a look here:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/tables.html#adef-char

especially the HTML example reported in the same page.

Comment 4

[Robert Longson [:longsonr]]

duplicate of bug 915?

Comment 5

[Uqbar]

Robert, I don't think so.
This bug is not an inheritance problem with <COLGROUP> as that is not involved at all.
I'd say that's rather a missing implementation of HTML 4.01 which in turn makes the <COL> tag actually useless (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=915#c17) and the standard adherence incomplete.
Be warned, I'm talking about plain markup (aka HTML), not CSS.

Back to comment #27 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=915#c27) there's a basic mistake IMHO.
Whatever is not defined in CSS2.1 (http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/tables.html#columns) should not hinder what's explicitly defined in HTML4.01 (http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/tables.html#h-11.2.4.2). I agree that's somehow confusing and maybe a warning to the W3C WG should be rised.
 
Moreover, there is at least one browser implementing that part of the standard which happens to (sadly) be Internet Explorer v7 (7.0.5730.11IC) which is 2+ years old now. And I have no access to Opera, Safari or Konqueror to test.

Finally, BUG#915 is related to a Beta1 of FF and is 10+ years old (!) and we now have 3.0.8 as current.

Comment 6

[Uqbar]

Please refer also to: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/tables.html#column-alignment
and also to Erratum #70 in http://www.w3.org/Style/css2-updates/CR-CSS21-20070719-errata.html

Quoting:
"17.5.4 Horizontal alignment in a column
The horizontal alignment of a cell's content within a cell box is specified with the 'text-align' property."

"Erratum 70 - Section 17.5.4 Horizontal alignment in a column

[2008-04-07] Clarification:

The horizontal alignment of a cell's inline content within a cell box is can be specified with the 'text-align' property."

So, even at the CSS2.1 level, the horizontal alignment of columns is defined explicitly, despite previously (at 17.3) it seems that the text-align is not included in the list.

Comment 7

[Uqbar]

I only hope this bug won't require 10+ years for investigation like 915.
Table column alignment is a rather useful feature, and this is why the standard defines such a property for the <COL> tag.
Maybe I'll try to give a look to the FF HTML parser, just to see whether I can identify the offending code.

Comment 8

[Andrew Hagen]

Confirming. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2a1pre) Gecko/20090416 Minefield/3.6a1pre. Running on Windows Vista x32. 

Setting to All/all, trunk. --> Core. Testcase. Both HTML4 and XHTML. 

It appears Opera 9.64 renders it right.

As stated above, the usefulness of the col and colgroup tags depend on this working.

Comment 9

[Bernd]

this is exactly what bug 915 is about.

>Finally, BUG#915 is related to a Beta1 of FF and is 10+ years old (!) and we
>now have 3.0.8 as current.

bug 915 is related to any release we had and so to trunk and any 3.x version