width | NN 4 IE 4 CSS 1
| Inherited: No
Sets the width of a block-level or replaced element's content (exclusive of borders, padding, and margins). Internet Explorer 4 applies the width attribute only to selected elements and absolute-positioned elements (which means DIV wrappers around other types of elements), but CSS2 recommends application to all block-level and replaceable elements as well. Navigator 4 and Internet Explorer 4 react differently to settings of the width style attribute. One thing they agree on is that if the content requires more width than is specified for the attribute (an IMG element's width, for instance), the content requirements override the attribute value (use the clipping region to truncate the width of the viewport for the element if you need to). But if the window is narrower than the specified width, Navigator tends to shrink the width of the element to fit the window width (to a point) so that the window doesn't need to scroll horizontally; IE 4, on the other hand, preserves the element's width setting regardless of the window width. A number of other discrepancies between browsers (and between operating system versions of the same browser) plague the width attribute. For example, if you create a DIV element whose width is 300px and nest a P element inside whose width is set to 200px, Navigator 4 respects the narrower width of the P element, but Internet Explorer 4 causes the P element to fill the 300-pixel width of the DIV container. You may also encounter varying behavior of parent and child elements when both have borders set. In Internet Explorer 4 for the Macintosh, some edges of the parent border are obscured.
CSS Syntax width: length | percentage | auto
JavaScript Equivalent width
Value See the discussion about length values at the beginning of this chapter. You may also specify a percentage value, which is calculated based on the width of the next outermost container. The setting of auto lets the browser determine the width of the element box based on the amount of space required to display the content within the current window width.
Initial Value auto
Example DIV#announce {position: relative; left: 30; width: 240} TEXTAREA {width: 80%}
Applies To Navigator 4: block-level and replaced elements. Internet Explorer 4: APPLET, DIV, EMBED, FIELDSET, HR, IFRAME, IMG, INPUT, MARQUEE, OBJECT, SELECT, SPAN, TABLE, and TEXTAREA elements. CSS2: all elements except nonreplaced inline elements, table rows, and row group elements.
Object Model Reference
IE | [window.]document.all.elementID.style.width