Questions on floating inline elements

[aqw]

Hi!

Does floating an inline element automatically converts it to a block-level element? If yes, what does this give for an inline element: float: left; display: inline; ?

Is it bad practice to float inline elements directly? (img, span, input, and so on).

Thanks

[kefeso]

Hi, yes by floating any element, you are converting it into a block-level element.

To my knowledge however, to give an element float and then display:inline is a method to solve IE's double float margin bug, which unnecessarily doubled the margin of the direction in which you have floated an element to.

Thirdly, I wouldn't consider it a bad practice, as long as you are not abusing floats. I for example floats imgs directly very often.

[AutisticCuckoo]

A user agent should ignore display:inline for a floated box, because it doesn't make sense. Thus it's 'safe' to use as an IE hack.

It's not bad practice to float inline elements. Sometimes it's even necessary; e.g., if you want to float an image inside a paragraph. Paragraphs cannot contain block-level children, so you must float the IMG element – which is a replaced inline element – itself.