XSL -> HTML - zero cellpadding / cellspacing impossible?

[allywilson]

I've been coming across this problem for a while now and it's part of the reason I don't fully use XML/XSL for web designing at the moment...

Basically the problem is that when I have the following in my XSL document <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">... the output doesn't actually look like no cellspacing/cellpadding. It DOES in internet explorer, but in every other browser I've tried it seems to give it some spacing/padding. I mainly use firefox (doesn't everyone these days?) by the way.

It's not that it's ignoring the attributes, but it's giving them a value other than zero. If I increase it to 1 or 2 then you can see the difference, if I change it to -1 or -2 it doesn't help.

It's only when used in an XSL document it does this however. If you wrote that same line in a plain HTML doc it'd work fine. Now...I know it's not my browser/system 'cause I've got 2 dual-boot PCs (XP and Gentoo on one, 2K and Mandrake on another!).

The only reason I can think of is that IE displays it fine due to it not really caring if it conforms to W3 standards or not...but others do. Surely there must be a workaround for this? I've tried as much as I can think of concerning HTML that might help.

I tried putting the attributes in an XML doc, and calling them forth that way as well as actually putting the attributes in myself within the XSL doc.

I can't be the only person who's noticed this can I? I mean - firefox is a pretty damn popular browser these days - so more and more websites will be looking dodgy, as well as web designers getting more and more frustrated!

Please, please, please, put me out of my misery!

~A~

 

[JontyMC]

Are you using a valid doctype? This is probably the cause. Post an example of XSL you're using.

 

[allywilson]

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="

http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xslutput method="html"/>

<xsl:template match="/">

That's the top of my XSL doc. I didn't have the xslutput before yesterday, just added it to see if it helps - didn't do anything.

Does it look good/bad?

 

[JontyMC]

IE allows a lot of sloppy code to be presented. This is good in one sense, as you can easily and quickly develop. However, it can be a real pain in the ass when you need to do something specific and can't work out where you're going wrong. Most of the other browsers require a valid doctype to make sure everything is how it should be.

What version/type of html are you using?

To output XHTML strict, for instance, you need to use:

<xsl:output method="xml" doctype-system="[URL unfurl="true"]http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"[/URL] doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"/>

Then run your output code through the validator at

http://validator.w3.org/

 

[allywilson]

I've not specified the version of HTML within the XSL document, so I'm assuming it's defaulting to HTML 4.01 (the last one created?)

When I add that xmlutput code you added all I get is text in a row. No tables, images or anything.

 

[JontyMC]

You code won't work because it's not XHTML (that particular DOCTYPE I gave as an example).

If you don't specify a DOCTYPE, you're at the mercy of the browser implementation. If you really want a cross-browser HTML solution, you MUST specify a DOCTYPE. It's also very advisable to make sure your code validates.

See this for more DOCTYPE info:

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html