Sent by James Aylard on 23 April 2002 00:12
Beau,
> http://www.cubeinc.ca/clients/kellogg/doctype.html
>
> In NS 6, there is an extra 3px (or so) space below all of the page's
images. Here's
Hmm. I didn't see anyone answer this, but I also got a 404 when
I attempted to open the URL. But if this is still an issue, it may well
be because Netscape 6 in so-called "standards-compliant" mode applies
line-height to images within block elements, such as tds or divs. That
can add unsightly space above and below your images.
> Once I get rid of the <!DOCTYPE> tag, the problem seems to disappear
in NS 6:
That's because by removing the doctype declaration you are
switching Mozilla from "standards-compliant" mode to "quirks" mode,
where no line-height is applied to images contained within blocks.
This is a very common complaint among developers new to
Mozilla's standards-compliant rendering behavior. I would argue that
this behavior is the result of an overly zealous "purist" interpretation
of the CSS 2 spec that ignores traditional rendering behavior, but
others would argue otherwise, and we'd all be none-the-closer to web
development bliss. So I won't go any further down that path.
The easiest solution, if you are looking for easy solutions, is
to either leave off the doctype declaration, allowing Mozilla to hum
merrily in quirks mode -- but which won't result in valid x/HTML -- or
to feed Mozilla a doctype which triggers its quirks mode while still
validating. You can find the ins and outs of doctype manipulation in
Mozilla can be found on the Mozilla web site [1]. Follow the links for a
highly detailed explanation of what does and does not trigger
standards-compliant mode in Mozilla.
A somewhat more challenging solution is to stick with Mozilla's
standards-compliant mode and work around the behavior. This list's own
Eric Meyer has written one of the most comprehensive presentations of
your options here [2]. I would only add a partially tested solution of
applying "line-height: 0px ;" to each block element which contains an
image affected by this behavior. Some caveats: this only makes sense if
your images are part of a pixel-precise image layout, and not
interspersed within blocks of text. I have also heard vague warnings
about there being some problems with this approach, although I have not
yet seen those problems myself or documented by others.
Oh, and if this doesn't address your problem then please repost
a working URL for dissection. Thanks.
1. http://mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/quirks/
2. http://developer.netscape.com/evangelism/docs/articles/img-table/
James Aylard
