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IE7 cause of "Text - Empty Text Node"

I'm using the IE web developer toolbar to troubleshoot an issue. A blank white space is appearing below a list item, and I can't logically figure out why. Using the web dev toolbar, I see that in example 1 below, a "Text - Empty Text Node" is being output below "Text - Google". Ironically, in the second, with a space manually inserted after the word "Google", that text node no longer appears. It would make complete sense to me if the results were reversed. Any ideas what may cause this odd behavior?

Note: this is occuring in IE7, but not IE8.

<li><a href="www.google.com">Google</a></li> - empty text node appears at end

<li><a href="www.google.com">Google </a></li> - no empty text node

Update: Ok I've narrowed down this issue. Basically, it seems like there's a conflict between some of the attributes I'm using. I need the a tags to be display as block, so they will wrap correctly when there are multiple lines. But I also need no empty space in between the items. I'm not quite sure why that empty space solves the problem, and would prefer not to just "hack" it.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
a
{
    display:block;
}
li
{
    zoom: 1;
}
</style>
    </head>
<body>
    <ul>
        <li>
        <div style="background-color:blue">
            <a href="#"><img  src="http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/logo.gif"/></a>
        </div>
            <ul>
                <li style="background-color:Red"><a href="#">One</a></li>
                <li style="background-color:green"><a href="#">Two </a></li>
                <li style="background-color:Yellow"><a href="#">Three</a></li>
            </ul>
        </li>
    </ul>
</body>
</html>
like image 715
Jeremy Avatar asked Sep 04 '09 13:09

Jeremy


3 Answers

Now that the <a> is a block level element, you have to give it hasLayout too.

a
{
    display:block;
    zoom:1;
}
like image 132
Emily Avatar answered Nov 09 '22 20:11

Emily


I've seen this occur with images surrounded by empty divs as well in which this ugly "text node" was creating whitespace that pushed the div below it down.

<div class="top"></div>
<img src="image.jpg" />
<div class="bottom"></div>

The solution that worked for me was to wrap the image in a div:

<div class="top"></div>
<div><img src="image.jpg" /></div>
<div class="bottom"></div>
like image 25
restlessdesign Avatar answered Nov 09 '22 21:11

restlessdesign


I encountered a similar issue with an inline list that I was working on. IE7 was adding a small amount of space after each one of my list elements. I had difficulty tracking down the issue but I finally discovered that the white space in my HTML was causing the space. I removed the white space and everything was fixed. See before and after example below:

<!-- Before -->
<ul>
     <li><a href="#">My Account</a></li>
     <li><a href="#">Support</a></li>
     <li class="last"><a href="#">Logout</a></li>
</ul>

<!-- After -->
<ul>
     <li><a href="#">My Account</a></li><li><a href="#">Support</a></li><li class="last"><a href="#">Logout</a></li>
</ul>

Hope this helps out someone!

like image 3
Cory Avatar answered Nov 09 '22 22:11

Cory