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Pulling my hair out with IE vs Firefox discrepencies

Thu 6 Apr 2006, 10:33 AM



by Ben Langhinrichs
Please note, I don't call them bugs, because I can't figure out whether they violate any known standard.  They are just annoying.  For example, if I have a table set as:

<table border='1' width='100%'><tr><td width='300'>A whole bunch of content that eventually wraps around when it gets too long, but the only question is exactly where it wraps and what it considers the margin.  Internet Explorer and Firefox handle this differently, and it is unclear which is "right" and which is "wrong", but for my purposes, it is just annoying that they are different</td></tr></table>

Firefox looks at the 100% for the table width, and figures it should ignore the specific width for the table cell.  Internet Explorer looks at the 300 pixel width for the table cell and ignores the fact that it is the only part of the width of the encompassing table.  The following difference results:

Firefox:
Firefox rendering

Internet Explorer:
Internet Explorer rendering

I have to admit that my gut feeling is that Internet Explorer is more "right", but I still think it looks stupid, and what is especially weird is that it doesn't break at 300 pixels, but rather at some point greater than 300 and less that 100% of the screen.  Of course, what I think it should really look like is what Midas does with this in Notes, which is:
Midas rendering

This presupposes that 100% is more vague than 300 pixels, so we should respect the specific over the vague, but I can't ignore the fact that I am not following either convention, and I am also probably not following whatever standard or rule there is.  What a fix to be in.

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