HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
In IE6, the
height
property is incorrectly treated as
min-height
, so this
forces the container to enclose its children. The
overflow
property is then
set back to “visible”, to ensure the content is not hidden or scrolled.
The only drawback to using the
overflow
method (in any browser) is the
possibility that the containing element will have scrollbars or hide content. If
there are any elements with negative margins or absolute positioning inside
the parent, they will be obscured if they go beyond the parent's borders, so
this method should be used carefully. It should also be noted that if the
containing element has to have a specified
height
, or
min-height
, then
you would definitely not be able to use the
overflow
method.
So, there really is no simple, cross-browser solution to the collapsing parent
issue. But almost any float clearing issue can be resolved with one of the
above methods.
Float-Related Bugs in Internet Explorer
Over the years, there have been numerous articles published online that
discuss common bugs in connection with floats in CSS layouts. All of these,
not surprisingly, deal with problems specific to Internet Explorer.
