Problem
I have a <select> where one of its <option>’s text values is very long. I want the <select> to resize so it is never wider than its parent, even if it has to cut off its displayed text. max-width: 100% should do that.
Before resize:
What I want after resize:
But if you load this jsFiddle example and resize the Result panel’s width to be smaller than that of the <select>, you can see that the select inside the <fieldset> fails to scale its width down.
What I’m actually seeing after resize:
However, the equivalent page with a <div> instead of a <fieldset> does scale properly. You can see that and test your changes more easily if you have a <fieldset> and a <div> next to each other on one page. And if you delete the surrounding <fieldset> tags, the resizing works. The <fieldset> tag is somehow causing horizontal resizing to break.
The <fieldset> acts is as if there is a CSS rule fieldset { min-width: min-content; }. (min-content means, roughly, the smallest width that doesn’t cause a child to overflow.) If I replace the <fieldset> with a <div> with min-width: min-content, it looks exactly the same. Yet there is no rule with min-content in my styles, in the browser default stylesheet, or visible in Firebug’s CSS Inspector. I tried to override every style visible on the <fieldset> in Firebug’s CSS Inspector and in Firefox’s default stylesheet forms.css, but that didn’t help. Specifically overriding min-width and width didn’t do anything either.
Code
HTML of the fieldset:
<fieldset>
<div class="wrapper">
<select id="section" name="section">
<option value="-1"></option>
<option value="1501" selected="selected">Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.</option>
<option value="1480">Subcontractor</option>
<option value="3181">Valley</option>
<option value="3180">Ventura</option>
<option value="3220">Very Newest Section</option>
<option value="1481">Visitor</option>
<option value="3200">N/A</option>
</select>
</div>
</fieldset>
My CSS that should be working but isn’t:
fieldset {
/* hide fieldset-specific visual features: */
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: none;
}
select {
max-width: 100%;
}
Resetting the width properties to the defaults does nothing:
fieldset {
width: auto;
min-width: 0;
max-width: none;
}
Further CSS in which I try and fail to fix the problem:
/* try lots of things to fix the width, with no success: */
fieldset {
display: block;
min-width: 0;
max-width: 100%;
width: 100%;
text-overflow: clip;
}
div.wrapper {
width: 100%;
}
select {
overflow: hidden;
}
More details
The problem also occurs in this more comprehensive, more complicated jsFiddle example, which is more similar to the web page I’m actually trying to fix. You can see from that that the <select> is not the problem – an inline-block div also fails to resize. Though this example is more complicated, I assume that the fix for the simple case above will also fix this more complicated case.
[Edit: see browser support details below.]
One curious thing about this problem is that if you set div.wrapper { width: 50%; }, the <fieldset> stops resizing itself at the point then the full-size <select> would have hit the edge of the viewport. The resizing happens as if the <select> has width: 100%, even though the <select> looks like it has width: 50%.
If you give the <select> itself width: 50%, that behavior does not occur; the width is simply correctly set.
I don’t understand the reason for that difference. But it may not be relevant.
I also found the very similar question HTML fieldset allows children to expand indefinitely. The asker couldn’t find a solution and guesses that there is no solution apart from removing the <fieldset>. But I’m wondering, if it really is impossible to make the <fieldset> display right, why is that? What in <fieldset>’s spec or default CSS (as of this question) causes this behavior? This special behavior is probably be documented somewhere, since multiple browsers work like this.
Background goal and requirements
The reason I’m trying to do this is as part of writing mobile styles for an existing page with a big form. The form has multiple sections, and one part of it is wrapped in a <fieldset>. On a smartphone (or if you make your browser window small), the part of the page with the <fieldset> is much wider than the rest of the form. Most of the form constrains its width just fine, but the section with the <fieldset> does not, forcing the user to zoom out or scroll right to see all of that section.
I’m wary of simply removing the <fieldset>, as it is generated on many pages in a big app, and I’m not sure what selectors in CSS or JavaScript might depend on it.
I can use JavaScript if I need to, and a JavaScript solution is better than nothing. But if JavaScript is the only way to do this, I’d be curious to hear an explanation for why this is not possible using only CSS and HTML.
Edit: browser support
On the site, I need to support Internet Explorer 8 and later (we just dropped support for IE7), the latest Firefox, and the latest Chrome. This particular page should also work on iOS and Android smartphones. Slightly degraded but still usable behavior is acceptable for Internet Explorer 8.
I retested my broken fieldset example on different browsers. It actually already works in these browsers:
Internet Explorer 8, 9, and 10
Chrome
Chrome for Android
It breaks in these browsers:
Firefox
Firefox for Android
Internet Explorer 7
Thus, the only browser I care about that the current code breaks in is Firefox (on both desktop and mobile). If the code were fixed so it worked in Firefox without breaking it in any other browsers, that would solve my problem.
The site HTML template uses Internet Explorer conditional comments to add classes such .ie8 and .oldie to the <html> element. You can use those classes in your CSS if you need to work around styling differences in IE. The classes added are the same as in this old version of HTML5 Boilerplate.
Update (25 Sept 2017)
The Firefox bug described below is fixed as of Firefox 53 and the link to this answer has finally been removed from Bootstrap's documentation.
Also, my sincere apologies to the Mozilla contributors who had to block removing support for -moz-document partly due to this answer.
The fix
In WebKit and Firefox 53+, you just set min-width: 0; on the fieldset to override the default value of min-content.¹
Still, Firefox is a bit… odd when it comes to fieldsets. To make this work in earlier versions, you must change the display property of the fieldset to one of the following values:
table-cell (recommended)
table-column
table-column-group
table-footer-group
table-header-group
table-row
table-row-group
Of these, I recommend table-cell. Both table-row and table-row-group prevent you from changing width, while table-column and table-column-group prevent you from changing height.
This will (somewhat reasonably) break rendering in IE. Since only Gecko needs this, you can justifiably use #-moz-document—one of Mozilla's proprietary CSS extensions—to hide it from other browsers:
#-moz-document url-prefix() {
fieldset {
display: table-cell;
}
}
(Here's a jsFiddle demo.)
That fixes things, but if you're anything like me your reaction was something like…
What.
There is a reason, but it's not pretty.
The default presentation of the fieldset element is absurd and essentially impossible to specify in CSS. Think about it: the fieldset's border disappears where it's overlapped by a legend element, but the background remains visible! There's no way to reproduce this with any other combination of elements.
To top it off, implementations are full of concessions to legacy behaviour. One such is that the minimum width of a fieldset is never less than the intrinsic width of its content. WebKit gives you a way to override this behaviour by specifying it in the default stylesheet, but Gecko² goes a step further and enforces it in the rendering engine.
However, internal table elements constitute a special frame type in Gecko. Dimensional constraints for elements with these display values set are calculated in a separate code path, entirely circumventing the enforced minimum width imposed on fieldsets.
Again—the bug for this has been fixed as of Firefox 53, so you do not need this hack if you are only targeting newer versions.
Is using #-moz-document safe?
For this one issue, yes. #-moz-document works as intended in all versions of Firefox up until 53, where this bug is fixed.
This is no accident. Due in part to this answer, the bug to limit #-moz-document to user/UA stylesheets was made dependent on the underlying fieldset bug being fixed first.
Beyond this, do not use #-moz-document to target Firefox in your CSS, other resources notwithstanding.³
¹ Value may be prefixed. According to one reader, this has no effect in Android 4.1.2 Stock Browser and possibly other old versions; I have not had time to verify this.
² All links to the Gecko source in this answer refer to the 5065fdc12408 changeset, committed 29ᵗʰ July 2013; you may wish to compare notes with the most recent revision from Mozilla Central.
³ See e.g. SO #953491: Targeting only Firefox with CSS and CSS Tricks: CSS hacks targeting Firefox for widely referenced articles on high-profile sites.
Safari on iOS issue with selected answer
I found the answer from Jordan Gray to be particularly helpful.
However it didn't seem to solve this issue on Safari iOS for me.
The issue for me is simply that the fieldset cannot have an auto width if the element within has a max-width as a % width.
Fix for issue
Simply setting the fieldset to have a 100% width of it's container seems to get around this issue.
Example
fieldset {
min-width: 0;
width: 100%;
}
Please refer to the below for working examples - if you remove the % width off the fieldset or replace it with auto, it will not continue to function.
JSFiddle | Codepen
I’ve struggled for many hours with this, and basically, the browser is applying computed styling that you need to override in your CSS. I forget the exact property that is being set on fieldset elements versus divs (perhaps min-width?).
My best advice would be to change your element to a div, copy the computed styles from your inspector, then change your element back to fieldset and compare the computed styles to find the culprit.
Hope that helps.
Update: Adding display: table-cell helps in non-Chrome browsers.
.fake-select { white-space:nowrap; } caused the fieldset to interpret the .fake-select element by its original width, rather than its forced width (even when the overflow is hidden).
Remove that rule, and change .fake-select's max-width:100% to just width:100% and everything fits. The caveat is that you see all of the content of the fake-select, but I don't think this is all that bad, and it fits horizontally now.
Update: with the current rules in the following fiddle (which contains only real selects), the fieldset's children are constrained to correct widths. Other than removing rules for .fake-select and fixing comments (from // comment to /* comment */, I've noted changes in the fiddle's CSS.
I understand your problem better now, and the fiddle reflects some progress. I set default rules for all <select>s, and reserve .xxlarge for those which you know will be wider than 480px (and this only works because you know the width of #viewport, and can manually add the class to those too wide. Just requires a little bit of testing)
Proof
I have a list of checkboxes with labels and I am noticing that the spacing looks different in Firefox in comparison to IE.
I have applied the CSS below to try and remove all spacing.
border: 0 none;
margin: 0;
outline: medium none;
padding: 0;
Unfortunately, as you can see from the screen shots below, there still seems to be some extra space between the Firefox checkbox and label.
Firefox:
Internet Explorer
Why does Firefox still show space between the checkbox and label but Internet Explorer has none using the same CSS?
In short, the reason as to why you're seeing this is that such details aren't defined as a standard anywhere, and come down to the 'user-agent stylesheet' - a set of default styles that are applied by the specific browser.
It's something that frustrates plenty of designers/developers, and has led to the development of some kinds of CSS Reset stylesheets. One of the best (in my opinion) is normalize.css, which aims to provide consistent and sensible defaults, smoothing over cross-browser inconsistencies like the one you've described.
In my web page, there are some items listed like this, Item 1Item 2item 3 I am wondering, it is taking much space in IE7(I haven't checked it yet on other versions of IE browsers) whereas in FF and Chrome it is fine. I have given "list-style-type: none" in my CSS. Still cant guess why it is taking space. Please help.
Link Normalize CSS in your HTML page and your page should render the same in all major browsers.
Normalize.css makes browsers render all elements more consistently and in line with modern standards. It precisely targets only the styles that need normalizing.
Edit:
There can be an issue with the margin and padding, keep it to 0-
ul, li{
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
This one worked for me:
li { display:inline; }
There's something wrong with my CSS-code for a list. Indentation of second (and further) lines of list items are not correct in IE, but okay in other browsers. See: http://jsfiddle.net/nXYee/
Any idea?
IE8 gives this result:
Chrome, Safari and FF give this result:
This occurs because you've placed the bullet inside the list item (list-style-position:inside;), and the browser controls the space between the bullet and the li content, not you. Internet Explorer assigns more space between the bullet and the content than the other browsers you mentioned.
The fact that your indented content aligns correctly in Chrome/Safari/Firefox is because those browsers all implemented the same (or similar) distance between the bullet and the li content, so a text-indent of 1em gives you a visually consistent result - but really this visual consistency is just a fluke.
(In fact, if you check closely you'll notice that Firefox is slightly out too).
If you feel it is necessary to display the bullet inside the list items, then you may find you need to use a conditional comment to feed different text-indent and padding-left values to IE (e.g. 1.5em/-1.5em) - but that will break in IE10, which doesn't support conditional comments.
Personally, I would keep the bullets outside the list items, since I think you'll find it much easier to get a consistent result.
Hmm it looks like you were overthinking a bit in terms of your css with all that list positions and negative text margin, I've simplified it to the following:
body {
font-family:verdana;
font-size:1.0em;
width:500px;
}
ul {
list-style-type:disc;
padding-left:1em;
margin-left:0px;
}
Tested it on IE8, looks normal.
http://jsfiddle.net/nXYee/1/
I'm quite certain it has something to do with your styles, specifically, this part:
li {
list-style-position:inside;
...
}
ul {
text-indent:-1em;
padding-left:1em;
...
}
When list-style-position is set to inside, it's considered part of the list item itself and when the item wraps, it will wrap to under the item marker. It is then indented due to your left padding being set - but it's not enough to get it to the right level. FF and Webkit may use some other algorithms to determine the position, or maybe 1em is just evaluates differently.
I have forked your jsfiddle and fixed the styles in it so that the list is now displayed correctly:
http://jsfiddle.net/8vxTw/3/
ul {
list-style-position: outside !important;
}
fixed it I've had similar problem
i know IE6 is dead,but in china, there are lots of people still using it. so expect someone can do me a favor about this problem.
this is the page.the even line's background color is not the same length, under IE6, which is shorter
the display under IE6. (http://run.xxmn.com/ie6.jpg). the bgcolor displays different from other browers.
the display under IE7,FF,CHROME (http://run.xxmn.com/ie7.jpg). it displays ok.
how to make it under IE6 displays the same result as other browers?
ps:the problem is solved. thanks all the guys.
The problem in IE6 is probably due to negative margins on the views-field-title class (though I don't have IE6 installed to check).
You don't actually need negative margins to achieve the effect you want. So suggest removing them like this:
Remove margin-left: -4px; from #left_cplist .cplist-bg .view-content .views-field-title
Remove margin-left: 5px; form #left_cplist .cplist-bg .views-row