Bug 137542

Summary:

REGRESSION: Table CSS "empty-cells: show;" ignored

Product:

WebKit

Reporter:

Edward Sabol <edwardjsabol>

Component:

CSS

Assignee:

Nobody <webkit-unassigned>

Status:

RESOLVED FIXED

Severity:

Normal

Keywords:

Regression

Priority:

Version:

528+ (Nightly build)

Hardware:

All

OS:

All

Attachments:

Description	Flags
Empty table cells in Webkit Nightly (r174423)	none
Empty table cells in Chrome 38.0.2125.101 (rendered properly)	none
Minimal test case	none

Description Edward Sabol 2014-10-08 16:55:16 PDT

Created attachment 239501 [details]
Empty table cells in Webkit Nightly (r174423)

After upgrading to Safari 7.1 on OSX 10.9.5 and iOS 8.0 recently, I noticed that the table CSS property "empty-cells: show;" was apparently being ignored where it wasn't previously. I don't recall noticing any issues with Safari 7.0.x or iOS 7.x, but I'm not 100% sure on that. I checked the latest Webkit Nightly (r174423), and it exhibited the same issue. The latest versions of Chrome and Firefox render empty table cells properly with "empty-cells: show;", but the latest Safari/Webkit versions do not. Toggling the "empty-cells: show;" CSS property in Web Inspector has no visible effect at all. I've attached screen shots of a table with empty cells in the latest WebKit and in the latest Chrome.

I tried to narrow down where the regression took place by downloading progressively older versions of Webkit Nightly. I got as far as SVN r166355 (late March 2014), and the bug was there. If you go a couple weeks earlier than that, Webkit Night just crashes on 10.9.5 and if you go a couple months earlier than that and launching Webkit Nightly only presents a dialog saying that OS X 10.9 is not supported.

Comment 1 Edward Sabol 2014-10-08 16:56:31 PDT

Created attachment 239502 [details]
Empty table cells in Chrome 38.0.2125.101 (rendered properly)

Comment 2 Edward Sabol 2015-07-24 12:29:32 PDT

Created attachment 257468 [details]
Minimal test case

Minimal test case for "empty-cells: show;" regression.

I just tested the latest WebKit Nightly (r187289), and this bug is *still* an issue.

Comment 3 Edward Sabol 2016-02-11 16:32:26 PST

Interesting (to me, at least) observation:

If you specify <!DOCTYPE html>, then the CSS "empty-cells: show;" works. If you specify any other DOCTYPE or no DOCTYPE, it doesn't. I guess this is some change to the quirks mode?

I still consider this to be a regression because "empty-cells: show;" worked in WebKit/Safari long before WebKit ever supported HTML 5.

Comment 4 Edward Sabol 2016-02-16 11:49:48 PST

Correction: HTML 4.01 strict also works. 4.01 Transitional does not, however.

"empty-cells: show" does not work if you have no DOCTYPE at all or with HTML 4.01 Transitional. It used to work prior to Safari 7.1.

Comment 5 Edward Sabol 2016-09-27 12:41:05 PDT

According to my tests, this regression has been fixed in the recent Safari 10 release and is also fixed in the Safari Technology Preview.

It took about 2 years, but I'm glad to see it resolved. I do wish somebody had commented on this bug besides me in that time though.