DOCTYPE Strict uses "correct" box model - so why is 100% width now useless?

Shadow Lynx

Consider this simple HTML:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 STRICT//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
<head>
<title>Strict kills my widths!</title>
</head>
<body>
<table style="width:400px; table-layout:fixed;">
<colgroup>
<col style="width:50%;"/ >
<col style="width:50%;"/ >
</colgroup>
<tr>
<td>
<input type="text" style="width:100%;" />
</td>
<td>
<input type="text" style="width:100%;" />
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

Both text boxes have their right edges clipped off. Sure, the "Proper"
box model says that width is the width of the content, excluding the
padding and border (and margin, of course.) Wonderful. So now, with
all standard text boxes (and many other controls) having things like
padding and borders, what good is a percentage width?

I could (and do, for lack of a better workaround) use a slightly
smaller width, like 98%, but that has to be adjusted depending on the
width of the table and how many columns it has - smaller tables require
even more reduction in percentage width for the text boxes to fit.

I know the geniuses in the W3C think that their box model is the best,
but if you draw a box (essentially a border) and then write some text
in the middle of it with some space between the edge of the box and the
text, then ask any kid to measure the width of the box, he'll measure
from border to border, INCLUDING padding!

I know, I should stop whining and just stop using STRICT, right? Well,
I could, but that's a step backwards and there are other parts of the
strict doctype that are very appealing.

There's got to be a viable solution to this. Sure, 100% minus padding
minus border is the real answer, but since that's not possible (without
using dynamic properties) to put specify such a formula as width, how
can I solve this issue?

I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS!

Mar 11 '06 #1

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1924

Shadow Lynx

I explored the Dynamic Properties avenue and came up with the following
css/function combo that will do what I consider to be proper width
calculations, although it's certainly not a perfect calculation since
it doesn't take into account every scenario. It's a relatively
intensive function when used/called by many different controls on a
page.

The real point is, why the heck should I need such a thing!!?? Please,
someone tell me I wasted my time by doing this because there really IS
a much better and less complex way of accomplishing this when using
Strict!

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 STRICT//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
<head>
<title>Strict kills my widths!</title>
<style>
.Auto100 {
width: expression(autoWidth('100%', this));
}
</style>
<script language="javascript">
// relWidth should be a percentage or a pixel offset (ex. -10 or
'100%')
// TABLEs must have table-layout:fixed or this will result in
infinite recursion!
// Note: If the arguments were (obj, relWidth), this would silently
fail to execute,
// and I have no idea why - the object MUST be the last argument.
function autoWidth(relWidth, obj) {
var defaultCellPadding = 1;
var cellPadding = 0;
if (obj.parentNode.tagName == "TD") {
var parentTable =
obj.parentNode.parentNode.parentNode.parentNode;
cellPadding = (parentTable.cellPadding) ?
parentTable.cellPadding : defaultCellPadding;
}
var objDiff = (obj.offsetWidth - obj.style.pixelWidth) +
(cellPadding * 2);
var maxWidth = obj.parentNode.clientWidth - objDiff;
if (typeof(relWidth) == "string" && relWidth.slice(-1) == "%") {
var pctValue = relWidth.slice(0, -1) * .01;
newWidth = parseInt(maxWidth * pctValue, 10) + "px";
} else {
newWidth = (maxWidth + parseInt(relWidth, 10)) + "px";
}
return newWidth;
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<table style="width:700px; table-layout:fixed;" cellspacing="10"
cellpadding="3">
<colgroup>
<col style="width:50%;"/ >
<col style="width:50%;"/ >
</colgroup>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">With the workaround - everything fits as it
should:</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td bgcolor="lightgreen">
<input type="text" class="Auto100" value="TextBox" />
</td>
<td bgcolor="orange">
<select style="width:100%;"><option>Drop Down
List</option></select>

</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td bgcolor="magenta">
<textarea class="Auto100">TextArea</textarea>
</td>
<td bgcolor="tan">
<div style="background-color:Window; padding:5px; border:1px
solid red;" class="Auto100">DIV</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2"><br>
Without the workaround (normal percentages) - everything but
SELECTs are clipped:</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td bgcolor="lightgreen">
<input type="text" style="width:100%;" value="TextBox" />
</td>
<td bgcolor="orange">
<select style="width:100%;"><option>Drop Down
List</option></select>

</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td bgcolor="magenta">
<textarea style="width:100%;">TextArea</textarea>
</td>
<td bgcolor="tan">
<div style="width:100%; background-color:Window; padding:5px;
border:1px solid red;" class="Auto100">DIV</div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

--- Watch out for forced newsgroup word wrapping!

Mar 11 '06 #2

by: N. Demos | last post by:

The following code renders as intended in IE (A TABLE, with cells of fixed width and height, inside of a DIV with fixed width and height and overflow set to hidden.) In Firefox, the table cells...