27099 2014-10-18 16:00:34 +0000 The "everyone wants" colspan="0" option for TD elements was dropped, yet the "no one uses" rowspan="0" remains? 2016-04-27 21:21:29 +0000 1 1 1 Unclassified HTML WG HTML5 spec unspecified PC Windows NT RESOLVED MOVED P1 normal --- 1 stephen.cunliffe dave.null arronei mike public-html-admin public-html-wg-issue-tracking public-html-bugzilla oldest_to_newest 113416 0 stephen.cunliffe 2014-10-18 16:00:34 +0000 "The td and th elements may have a colspan content attribute specified, whose value must be a valid non-negative integer greater than zero." Back in HTML 4.x http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/tables.html#adef-colspan the colspan"0" attribute on a TD element was spec'd to tell the user agent to span the column across all columns in the colgroup. This appears to have been dropped. This is rather frustrating as it seems to conflict will developers' interests. Only Mozilla/Firefox (AFAIK) correctly implemented this attribute value behavior yet it is highly desired: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/398734/colspan-all-columns (134 upvotes, and 21 stars!) The resolution for developers is to specify a wildly inaccurate bogus high number that exceeds the tables rendered column count. Although effective in some scenarios it wreaks of sloppy coding and won't work when the table-layout is set to fixed. There's a bit more discussion about the colspan="0" and rowspan="0" attributes in this bug: https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=13770 It seems that rowspan="0" remained because both Opera and Firefox implemented it but because Opera didn't implement colspan="0" this item was "cut". Whilst I understand the (if 2 browsers implement) rule for keeping items in the spec this seems really messed up. I hate to be a spoil sport on this but if we can't bring back colspan="0" and have browsers properly implement it, I'd rather drop both attributes' (zero-value-scenario) as it will only cause confusion to developers that both attributes exist, but only 1 has the magic zero value that spans... and it is specifically ***NOT*** on the attribute developers rarely want it on. 113417 1 stephen.cunliffe 2014-10-18 16:02:28 +0000 ugh... can't edit my comment... this was meant to be: This is rather frustrating as it seems to conflict with developers' interests. ^^ 113418 2 stephen.cunliffe 2014-10-18 16:04:42 +0000 I must proofread next time, that last line was meant to be: and it is specifically ***NOT*** on the attribute developers actually want it on. 121049 3 mike 2015-06-16 10:23:06 +0000 Making this a higher priority to actively seek more feedback on from implementers and webdevs. 126226 4 arronei 2016-04-27 21:21:29 +0000 HTML5.1 Bugzilla Bug Triage: Moved to Github issue: https://github.com/w3c/html/issues/284 To file additional issues please use the W3C HTML5 Issue tracker: https://github.com/w3c/html/issues/new Thanks!