The original IE team actively took out their spite on developers

Posted by Tim Connor Sun, 08 Apr 2007 16:36:00 GMT

I know we are not supposed to attribute to malice what could be covered by stupidity, but…. Unless they put someone who couldn’t tie their shoelaces, without almost choking to death on them, behind a keyboard as a key contributor, I can’t see how they managed some of the feats they did, other than out of a seething hatred for web developers to come.

Here is how to shrinkwrap a block level element around its contents, for instance.


#yourelement {display:inline-block;}
#yourelement {display:inline;}

Ya, that’s right, the second declaration on the exact same element doesn’t actually overwrite as it does everywhere else in CSS, but in a completely unprecedented move*, it combines with it in some unholy way to create a Frankensteinian abomination of css.

Basically the first declaration triggers hasLayout, and that combined with setting display to inline, in the second one, causes inline-block behavior.

WTF, mate?

* No really, where else in ALL of selector style programming does overwriting a value not overwrite it. Hell in any programming that is a little bit of dark magic. Now I’m picturing the IE lead making a Faustian bargain to get his job, and then doing Mephistopheles bidding once he was there.