Christian Heilmann

Q&A: Extra whitespace in lists

Monday, February 12th, 2007 at 11:32 am

Q: I keep having problems with a list showing up as two lines of instead of one (there is a big gap between the items) in Internet Explorer 6. I don’t know what is causing it as there is nothing inside the list items but text.

A: The problem is that you most likely have line breaks and tabs in between the closing LI and the next opening LI. This is a great thing to do to keep your code readable but Internet Explorer 6 (MSIE6) has a problem with it. One workaround would be to add the linebreaks and tabs inside the brackets of the LI elements, but that is neither pretty nor clever as MSIE6 is on the decline. You can use CSS to work around the same problem by using a fixed height for MSIE6 and overriding this for newer and better browsers that understand the child selector. A sequence like li{height:1em;} html>body li{height:auto;} will fix your problem as MSIE6 also increases the size of the element when the font is larger or the content of the list item spills out into two lines. Without the second selector newer browsers would cut off your content.

This has been published in the Q&A session of the UK based paper magazine “net”. Reproduction rights were given by the publisher.

Share on Mastodon (needs instance)

Share on BlueSky

Newsletter

Check out the Dev Digest Newsletter I write every week for WeAreDevelopers. Latest issues:

160: Graphs and RAGs explained and VS Code extension hacks Graphs and RAG explained, how AI is reshaping UI and work, how to efficiently use Cursor, VS Code extensions security issues.
159: AI pipelines, 10x faster TypeScript, How to interview How to use LLMs to help you write code and how much electricity does that use? Is your API secure? 10x faster TypeScript thanks to Go!
158: 🕹️ Super Mario AI 🔑 API keys in LLMs 🤙🏾 Vibe Coding Why is AI playing Super Mario? How is hallucinating the least of our worries and what are rules for developing Safety Critical Code?
157: CUDA in Python, Gemini Code Assist and back-dooring LLMs We met with a CUDA expert from NVIDIA about the future of hardware, we look at how AI fails and how to play pong on 140 browser tabs.
156: Enterprise dead, all about Bluesky and React moves on! Learn about Bluesky as a platform, how to build a React App and how to speed up SQL. And play an impossible game in the browser.

My other work: