IE6 nowrap and floating problem

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2086202

Question

This is driving me nuts...

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
<head>
    <title></title>
    <style type="text/css">
        .cantWrapper { white-space: nowrap; }
        .cantWrapper .floatedDiv { float: left; background-color: Blue; height: 16px; width: 16px;}
        .cantWrapper .text {  }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <div class="cantWrapper">
        <div class="floatedDiv"></div>
        <div class="text">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque laoreet felis quis erat blandit non interdum eros aliquet. Nullam libero risus, commodo sed lacinia vitae, aliquet at lacus. Ut mattis, leo vel dignissim ullamcorper, augue risus dapibus purus, in suscipit nisi ante sit amet massa. Curabitur in magna sed mauris auctor adipiscing vehicula a nisi. Nulla id massa sapien, eu viverra odio. Curabitur sollicitudin libero quis nunc molestie lacinia. In dictum sapien ut eros scelerisque adipiscing. Fusce feugiat adipiscing elit, commodo placerat lacus molestie in. Phasellus pharetra vestibulum aliquet. Sed tincidunt pulvinar mattis. Curabitur congue est placerat risus iaculis quis condimentum neque sodales. Vivamus in urna purus, in luctus velit. Sed mollis orci sed mauris ullamcorper vulputate. Nullam eget ante nibh, at sagittis lectus.</div>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

In every other browser, the text floats after the blue box. In IE6 however (somewhat predictably), the text drops below the blue box.

...I just can't find an answer to this. The text cannot wrap, hence the nowrap.

-- Randomly, adding this makes the blue box disappear completely

Was it helpful?

Solution 3

Ah ha, we have found the answer: Thank you to everyone else who helped, and to Rosie for this.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
<head>
    <title></title>
    <style type="text/css">
        .cantWrapper { position: relative; width: 100%; clear: left; white-space: nowrap; }
        .cantWrapper .floatedDiv { float: left; display: inline; background-color: Blue; height: 16px; width: 16px;}
        .cantWrapper .text { position: absolute; top: 0; }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <div class="cantWrapper">
        <div class="floatedDiv"></div>
        <div class="text">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque laoreet felis quis erat blandit non interdum eros aliquet. Nullam libero risus, commodo sed lacinia vitae, aliquet at lacus. Ut mattis, leo vel dignissim ullamcorper, augue risus dapibus purus, in suscipit nisi ante sit amet massa. Curabitur in magna sed mauris auctor adipiscing vehicula a nisi. Nulla id massa sapien, eu viverra odio. Curabitur sollicitudin libero quis nunc molestie lacinia. In dictum sapien ut eros scelerisque adipiscing. Fusce feugiat adipiscing elit, commodo placerat lacus molestie in. Phasellus pharetra vestibulum aliquet. Sed tincidunt pulvinar mattis. Curabitur congue est placerat risus iaculis quis condimentum neque sodales. Vivamus in urna purus, in luctus velit. Sed mollis orci sed mauris ullamcorper vulputate. Nullam eget ante nibh, at sagittis lectus.</div>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

OTHER TIPS

The reason for this behavior is that .wrapper .text doesn't have a width set, and it also doesn't float. As a result, it will assume 100% width, as DIVs do by default, and when it uses 100% of its container's width, it cannot fit next to the blue box, but will show up immediately below it. To fix this, you need to set a width that is everything-16px, or you need to set float: left to the .text DIV.

The latter solution is more convenient as it doesn't require setting fixed widths, but it does require you to add a clearing DIV as the last child of .wrapper, or the content would not allocate any space in their container at all:

<div class="wrapper">
    <div class="floatedDiv"></div>
    <div class="text">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque laoreet felis quis erat blandit non interdum eros aliquet. Nullam libero risus, commodo sed lacinia vitae, aliquet at lacus. Ut mattis, leo vel dignissim ullamcorper, augue risus dapibus purus, in suscipit nisi ante sit amet massa. Curabitur in magna sed mauris auctor adipiscing vehicula a nisi. Nulla id massa sapien, eu viverra odio. Curabitur sollicitudin libero quis nunc molestie lacinia. In dictum sapien ut eros scelerisque adipiscing. Fusce feugiat adipiscing elit, commodo placerat lacus molestie in. Phasellus pharetra vestibulum aliquet. Sed tincidunt pulvinar mattis. Curabitur congue est placerat risus iaculis quis condimentum neque sodales. Vivamus in urna purus, in luctus velit. Sed mollis orci sed mauris ullamcorper vulputate. Nullam eget ante nibh, at sagittis lectus.</div>

    <div style="clear: both;"></div>
</div>

your <div class="text"> needs a width setting on it.

An attempt at a solution (but it won't validate and isn't pretty):

For IE6:

<style type="text/css">
        .cantWrapper { white-space: nowrap; }
        .cantWrapper .floatedDiv { display: inline; zoom: 1; background-color: Blue; height: 16px; width: 16px;}
        .cantWrapper .text { display: inline; }
    </style>

For non IE:

<style type="text/css">
        .cantWrapper { white-space: nowrap; }
        .cantWrapper .floatedDiv { display: inline-block; background-color: Blue; height: 16px; width: 16px;}
        .cantWrapper .text { display: inline; }
    </style>
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