[RESOLVED] Float issues

Hi (or however one starts these things),

I've been trying to 'style' the input (text) tags in an HTML form.
This has been successful by doing the following:

HTML Code:

---

<span class='inputleft'>
    <input class='input_styled' type='text' />
    <a class='inputright'></a>
</span>

---

CSS

Code:

---

input.input_styled {
        background:url(/library/images/input_middle.png) repeat-x top left;
        float: left;
        padding-top: 2px;
        padding-bottom: 2px;
        height: 16px;
}
span.inputleft {
        padding-left: 5px;
        height: auto;
        width: auto;
        float:left;
        background: url(/library/images/input_left.png) no-repeat 0px 0px;
}
a.inputright {
        height: auto;
        width: auto;
        background: url(/library/images/input_right.png) no-repeat top right;
        padding-left: 11px;
        padding-top: 18px;
        float: left;
        cursor: pointer;
}

---

...This works, by the way.

What is annoying, however, is that I don't want the parent <span> (inputleft) to be floated because that could, potentially, interfere with my page layout. Nor do I want to have to put dividers (which clear:all) in appropriate places since the styling et cetera is done with javascript to normal input tags.

When I remove the "float:left" property from the parent <span> tag, I can no longer see its background image anymore, which makes the whole effect pointless. I don't understand why it does this because it still has the padding-left value, which should (surely!) push the <input> element 5px to the right and make the thing visible again, no?

Any help would be much appreciated.

I appear to have fixed it by removing the width and height attributes. I assume having width & height as "auto" it made it the right width to contain the input and anchor tags.
I don't know why the left padding wasn't working but it seems that everything is now solved.