Mozilla Bug? Block element gets collapsed when positioned off-screen

[scott.whitmore]

I have a page with a wide table on it that scrolls left to right. The
header of each column has a contextual menu on it that grabs an
absolutely positined hidden div containing several links and places it
next to the header when you click on the contextual menu link. This
works great except for the columns that are initially off-screen to the
right. When you scroll over to these and click on the contextual menu
trigger in Mozilla/Firefox the containing div will not adjust it's
width to contain the links. It will work with a fixed width applied to
it, but since each menu has different content (and therefore different
width) I want it to have an auto width.

I've tried everything I can think of to get the container div to widen
to the appropriate width, but it just won't budge. The style is very
simple:

.contextdiv{
position:absolute;
border:2px solid #000000!important;
width:auto;
}

and the javascript to position it, just checks the location of the
trigger image and places the div next to it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[phil_gg04]

sc************@webct.com wrote:

I have a page with a wide table on it that scrolls left to right. The
header of each column has a contextual menu on it that grabs an
absolutely positined hidden div containing several links and places it next to the header when you click on the contextual menu link. This
works great except for the columns that are initially off-screen to the right. When you scroll over to these and click on the contextual menu
trigger in Mozilla/Firefox the containing div will not adjust it's
width to contain the links.

Hi Scott,

This is a known bug:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=201897

This bug has been marked "fixed" and if you try Mozilla 1.8b you'll
find that it is slightly better, but not yet correct. The remaining
issue is filed as another bug:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=275179

Vote for this bug!

As far as I recall this problem is unique to Mozilla with all the other
significant browsers getting it right, so most of your visitors will be
seeing your page as you expected.

--Phil.

[phil_gg04]

>> off-screen to the right

Mozilla/Firefox
not adjust its width to contain the links.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=201897
This bug has been marked "fixed" and if you try Mozilla 1.8b you'll
find that it is slightly better, but not yet correct.

I should add that you can make it look almost correct in 1.8b if you
set white-space:pre on the content of the menus.