how to "getComputedStyle" in IE6

[brothercake]

I want to find out the height of an inline list item. The CSS for it looks like this

ul.udm ul li {
   float:left;
   clear:both;
   width:10em;
   margin:0;
   padding:0;
   }

I'm inside a DHTML behavior (though not sure if this makes a difference) where the list-item object is "element". This is what I'm getting:

element.currentStyle.height // returns "auto"

and obviously

element.style.height // returns an empty string

but curiously

element.offsetHeight // returns 0


Any ideas?

[jkd]

Last ditch effort, try:

element.runtimeStyle.height

I wonder why offsetHeight is returning 0 though... perhaps the behavior is executed before the element even renders?

[brothercake]

Originally posted by jkd
element.runtimeStyle.height

Empty string again :(

I've got an inkling about this though - it's inside a behaviour attached to <li/> at the top of a complex list - and so it cascades through all levels of <li/> in the structure.

The attached mouseover function contains this:

if(element.parentElement.className!="udm") {
alert(element.offsetHeight);
}
else {
alert(element.offsetHeight);
}


The classname discriminator distinguishes events in the main list from events in the nested lists. The else condition is the main list-items, and there it correctly returns the offset height; only the nested items return 0.

It's bubbling of some kind, isn't it? If I "cancelBubble" at the end of the function, it won't cascade and I'll get the right value back ... but ... then *the whole thing doesn't work* - events have to cascade, otherwise it's a dead duck.

Er ...

[Jerome]

It's sunday, so don't blame me for this, did You try to extract - udm - from the others in Your CSS, like:

udm{
float:left;
clear:both;
width:10em;
margin:0;
padding:0;
}

ul.udm ul li {
float:left;
clear:both;
width:10em;
margin:0;
padding:0;
}

Or with ID, just so that it returns the value.

Jerome

[brothercake]

Thanks for the suggestion, but that implies a predicatable heirarchy; if the heirarchy is predictable then the value could be calculated from other values.

But it isn't predictable, which is why I need the offsetHeight.

But no worries, I found a different solution a while ago, which basically involved not needing to know :)