FIELDSET background color covers too much area?

[A Ratcliffe]

I'm putting together a form, using fieldsets. Up until now, it has been
looking good with the CSS styles I've applied...until I decided I wanted a
background colour for the fieldset's 'panel'.

The background-color fills the whole of the fieldset's area, not just
visible rectangle. This makes the whole thing look a mess.

I'm using IE 6 (latest patches) for my viewing at the moment, and I know it
has a load of bugs when it comes to CSS compliance, but is this another IE
specific bug? More importantly, whether it is more general or a specific
bug, is there any way of working round it with clever CSS rules, or a hack?
(I tend to work on the basis of 'if I can get it working on IE then it'll be
easy to get it working on a fully CSS compliant browser')

Thanks in advance for you help. In the meantime I'll have to go back to a
plain white background temporarily.

Yours,

Ann-Marie Ratcliffe

[Rowland Shaw]

I'm not sure I fully follow which bit you're contesting as wrong -- do you
have a sample page that illustrates this?

"A Ratcliffe" <aratc...@archiNOSPAMmagic.net> wrote...

[A Ratcliffe]

Quick update, I've just tried looking at the page via Mozilla Firebird, and
the background colour correctly fills just the 'panel' - looks like it is
another IE CSS bug. Still looking for a way to hack it if possible though.

Yours,

Ann-Marie Ratcliffe

[A Ratcliffe]

"Rowland Shaw" wrote:
> I'm not sure I fully follow which bit you're contesting as wrong -- do you
> have a sample page that illustrates this?
>

The background colour should fill the 'panel' of the Fieldset (its got an
etched border round the panel if you don't specify otherwise). The Legend
sits on the top border of this 'panel' (vertically centred on it as
standard). Instead, in IE the background color extends above the etched
line, filling the whole of the fieldset's total area on the page (from the
top of the Legend to the bottom border of the Fieldset).

If necessary I'll see if I can get a couple of screen shots, one from IE and
the other from Firebird so you can see the difference.

Yours,

Ann-Marie Ratcliffe

[Rowland Shaw]

Right, I knocked http://www.anotherpointless.org/test.html up.

As you say, Mozilla based keeps background-color within (and under) the
border.

IE and Opera extend the top-border to include the legend (and go full width
with it.

Seems to be (at least) an IE and Opera (7.11) issue. I expect it's down to
different interpretations of where the border really is (after all, you
can't have content (like a <legend>) drawn in the border/margin under normal
circumstances)

(don't have a KHTML based browser nor a Mac to hand to check
Safari/Konqueror/IE-Mac)

"A Ratcliffe" <aratc...@archiNOSPAMmagic.net> wrote...