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Asked: 2026-05-11T08:20:13+00:00

I’m trying to put some (vertically-stacked) display:block elements within a display:inline-block element. According to

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I’m trying to put some (vertically-stacked) display:block elements within a display:inline-block element. According to the CSS specification, the inline-block element should be a containing block, so it can have display:block elements within it and those should not affect the rest of the layout.

However, the display:block elements inside the display:inline-block elements disrupt the rest of the page; so does having nothing at all within the inline-block, or even a basic element like a paragraph; only simple text avoids disruption of the rest of the page (by disruption I mean shifting other divs down, e.g. in this case the left red block moves down a line and has a blank white space above it). I’m using Firefox 3.0.6.

<html><head><style type='text/css'> #left {   display: inline-block;   background: red;   width: 20%;   height: 100%; } #right {   display: inline-block;   background: green;   width: 80%;   height: 100%; } </style></head><body>   <div id='left'>Left</div><div id='right'>Right</div> </body></html>

The above shows as two panes, left red, right green, as expected. If I change ‘Right’ to 

<p>Right</p>

or remove it entirely, or (as I want to do) replace it with a couple of divs, I get the bad formatting.

Is this a Firefox bug, or am I doing something wrong, or are my expectations incorrect? (FWIW, IE 7 mangles them all equally, as if it doesn’t understand inline-block; doesn’t matter, this is an internal app. and I’m only using Firefox). I may be able to get the layout I want using float/margin, but I’d prefer not to have to do that.

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1 Answer

  1. Well display: inline-block can be a bit tricky to get cross-browser. It will require at minimum, a few hacks and, for Firefox 2, potentially an extra element.

    CSS

    .inlineBlock { display: -moz-inline-stack; display: inline-block; zoom: 1; *display: inline; }

    display: -moz-inline-stack is for Firefox 2. All the immediate children will need to have display: block or otherwise be block level elements. Note if you need your inline-block element to shrink wrap I think you can use display: -moz-inline-box instead.

    zoom: 1 gives hasLayout to the element (for IE 7 and below). Part 1 of the hack needed for IE7 and below compatibilty.

    **display: inline* is a hack second part of the hack needed for IE7 and below compatibility.

    I occasionally need to add overflow: hidden for IE compatibility as well.

    For your specific situation i think what you need is:

    <html><head><style type='text/css'> #left {   display: inline-block;   background: red;   width: 20%;   height: 100%;   vertical-align: top; } #right {   display: inline-block;   background: green;   width: 80%;   height: 100%;   vertical-align: top; } </style></head><body>   <div id='left'>Left</div><div id='right'><p>Right</p><p>Right 2</p></div> </body></html>
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