Why for li with style float:left browser evaluates the height of the ul element to 0?

Question

In the code presented on the gist : https://gist.github.com/1341600 I am trying to use ul/li elements for grouping together some search form elements (instead of table). When in

Answer 1

This behavior complies to W3C spec. It's deliberately, but can be a bit confusing first time. Container of the floated content must be shrunken to allow another inline content to flow around it's own one.

E.g. if you have a

    
     sometext
 

     sometext
 

you probably would expect that some text from the second p flow image.

If you need a container with width and height you can either specify them manually, or apply css overflow:auto or float:left to container;