12

In the son of suckerfish drop down menu:

http://www.htmldog.com/articles/suckerfish/dropdowns/example/

You see this rule

w\idth: 13.9em;

This can't be a typo as it appears various times in the css. What is it for?

TylerH
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Lisa
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  • @ozsenegal, that's no moon...uh, *mistake*. – David Thomas Apr 26 '10 at 17:27
  • ugh, using `ul` for menus instead of `menu`... what up with that? `menu` is a valid (deprecated) html 4 tag, and behaves like a `ul` by default. It's redefined and has a type attribute in html5 which allows for different display methods. – Tor Valamo Apr 27 '10 at 15:00

4 Answers4

10

This is called a CSS Hack.

Some browser will ignore the \ and treat that as a width property; other browsers will ignore the entire property.

You can see a complete list here.

SLaks
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8

It's called the Modified Box Model Hack.

From the linked site:

as explained above in the section on the SBMH is hidden from IE5.x/Win because of the character escape. IE5/Mac and IE6/Win which implement the CSS box model correctly, therefore, properly get a width of 100px.

Oded
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1

It's a "box model hack" to workaround the incorrect box model for older IE versions.

Read more about this specific hack here: http://css-discuss.incutio.com/wiki/Box_Model_Hack

FogleBird
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0

It likely has to do with the box model hack. Read here for more info: http://webdesign.about.com/od/css/a/aaboxmodelhack.htm

Bryan Downing
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