Re: Span width

It works fine in IE, but not in the mozilla breed of browsers.

No, it works fine (in the technical sense of working according to
specifications) on Mozilla and also on IE in "standards" mode.

Nope in IE7 in standard mode it "works" in that it honours the width.

I've
read quite a few threads about this and understand that the problem is
the width property only applies to block elements. Not to inline
elements like span. In this sense IE is wrong.

So if you knew that, why did you write roughly the opposite first?

I said it worked in the sense it honoured the width attribute, as you
already very well know.

But what are you trying to accomplish? If you just want 400px empty space to
the left of "Hello", as happens on IE in "quirks" mode, why don't you simply
e.g. wrap "Hello" inside an element and set padding-left: 400px for it?

I'm trying to have placeholders before and after some text, which a
user can customize by only modifying css. Padding is only one use for
it they, may also want different colours or different background
images, or nothing at all on either side of the text...

On 6 Jan, 16:10, Mark Smith <marksmith5... (AT) jungle-monkey (DOT) com> wrote:

Nope in IE7 in standard mode it "works" in that it honours the width.

That's possibly "useful", but it isn't "works" in the sense of
"complies with what the spec says".

The trouble with "useful" is that it usually means, "useful today, a
damn nuisance tomorrow, and unpredictable for either".

Mark Smith wrote:

in IE7 in standard mode it "works" in that it honours the width.

Not in my tests, it doesn't. Neither IE6 nor IE7 in standards mode
should apply width to a span element (or any other non-replaced inline
element) unless it's also styled as a block element.

Post a URL if you are seeing something else.

I'm trying to have placeholders before and after some text, which a
user can customize by only modifying css.

Try floats.

--
Berg