91186 - Anchor w/no href shows hover only over padding

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 5693

(Core :: CSS Parsing and Computation, defect)

Description

[gekacheka]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.2+)
Gecko/20010716
BuildID:    2001071604

An anchor should only change style according to :link, :hover, :active, :visited
if it is a referring link (i.e., it has an "href" attribute).
(See CSS1 sec2.1 Anchor pseudo-classes).  However, Mozilla erroneously does
change style when mouse hovers over padding (but not text), and when button is
activated, on anchors with no href.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. See attached example file.
2. Move mouse over left and right end of "no-href" anchor
3. Press button in "no-href" anchor.

Actual Results:  Mouse over padding at ends of "no-href" anchor changes color of
anchor to green.

Pressing button in no-href anchor changes color to red.

Expected Results:  No color changes, since this is an anchor with no href.

Comment 1

[gekacheka]

Attachment: Example demonstrating bug.

Comment 2

[gekacheka]

upped severity to minor since it can cause confusing behavior in a menu (e.g.,
if disabled items appear to be active.)

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

:hover and :active are not anchor-only pseudo-classes. They can apply to
arbitrary elements.  There is no reason to restrict application to <a> elements
with an href.

See http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/selector.html#dynamic-pseudo-classes

as opposed to http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/selector.html#link-pseudo-classes

Also from the CSS2 spec:

  Note. In CSS1, the ':active' pseudo-class was mutually exclusive with ':link'
  and ':visited'. That is no longer the case. An element can be both ':visited'
  and ':active' (or ':link' and ':active') and the normal cascading rules
  determine which properties apply.

Marking invalid since we're following the CSS2 spec here.  Someone depending on
links with no href not going active should make a rule more like:

a[href]:active

instead of

a:active

Comment 4

[gekacheka]

Attachment: Updated example: hover policy should be same for text and padding

Comment 5

[gekacheka]

Ok, my expectation was wrong, but there's still a problem.

In the example with no href, it only shows the hovering style/color when
hovering over the anchor padding, and not when hovering over the anchor text.
The hovering policy should be the same for hovering over padding and hovering
over the text.

See updated example.

Comment 6

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

I'm fairly certain that what you're seeing there is bug 5693.

On the off chance that it's not, setting status to NEW....

In the future, please do not mutate bugs.  Just file new ones for new twists on
the problem.

ccing dbaron who's been dealing with this hierarchical hover stuff.

Comment 7

[Pierre Saslawsky]

Marked dup of bug 5693.  Thanks Boris.


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 5693 ***