I expect following code to put my span to the top-left corner of the button, but it doesn't. Why is that?
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
<head>
<style type='text/css'>
</style>
</head>
<body>
<button style='height:100px;width:100px;position:relative;'>
<span style='position:absolute;top:0;left:0;'>text</span>
</button>
</body>
</html>
<span>
is placed relative to the vertical-middle line (with 3px padding I can't explain).
Replacing <button>
with <div>
does places <span>
at the top-left corner.
Question: why does absolute positioning within button (with position:relative) behaves differently from layout using <div>
? And how do I fix it?
Background: I use two absolutely positioned div's within button to create a floating-width button with rounded corners.
EDIT: IMPORTANT IE 8.0 works exactly as I expect it (span in the top-left corner), the problem I see is in Firefox (3.6.6).
I advice against using a <button>
this way. It is really difficult to style and you'll end up having to write specific styles for different browsers.
I needed to achieve something very similar and after dealing with a large amount of exceptions and fiddly positioning to accommodate different browser rendering, I went for this structure instead:
<div class="button">
<span>
<button>Text</button>
</span>
</div>
With the button tag reset this way:
button {
background:none repeat scroll 0 0 transparent;
border:0 none;
font-family:inherit;
font-size:inherit;
font-weight:inherit;
margin:0;
overflow:visible;
padding:0;
position:relative;
}
You can even use js to wrap the <button>
on page load. This system has turned out to be much more solid and reliable. Requiring less css and almost no browser specific styling.
Update:
As I commented below, the wrapping element should not be an <a>
tag. Remember that we need the <button>
to keeps its functionality, we just need it to be text only (form will still submit on enter).
You can still re-use any css that you may be using to turn standard links into expandable button widgets only in this case it;s a <div>
instead of an <a>
.
Your problem is only with Firefox?? (3.6.6) - Can't fix it with standard CSS. Try:
button::-moz-focus-inner {
border: 0;
padding: 0;
}
That will do it for Firefox hopefully. Good luck!