Created attachment 244759 [details] Example to reproduce the issue First bug #140541 should be fixed, but this issue was present before (Safari 7) and it's still present in Blink (https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=449475). Example (attached) to reproduce the issue ("Green" should be green and "Black" should be black): <style> .first-line-green::first-line { color: lime; } .float { float: left; } </style> <div class="first-line-green"> <div class="float"> Black </div> <div>Green</div> </div> In the example the text "Green" appears in black. Once bug #140541 is fixed, this problem might be probably because of "::first-line" skips the floated element as expected, but it doesn't select the "Green" text because of it's not the first child. Probably it's due to the condition "parentBlock->firstChild() != firstLineBlock" in RenderBlock::firstLineBlock() (but if you remove this condition other simple cases will fail): if (firstLineBlock->isReplaced() || firstLineBlock->isFloating() || !parentBlock || parentBlock->firstChild() != firstLineBlock || !isRenderBlockFlowOrRenderButton(*parentBlock)) break; However, if you remove the "<div>" wrapping "Green" it worked as expected (once bug #140541 is fixed it'll work as expected): <style> .first-line-green::first-line { color: lime; } .float { float: left; } </style> <div class="first-line-green"> <div class="float"> Black </div> Green </div> BTW, the same happens if you use a positioned element. From the spec (http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-selectors/#first-formatted-line): "The first formatted line of an element may occur inside a block-level descendant in the same flow (i.e., a block-level descendant that is not out-of-flow due to floating or positioning). For example, the first line of the DIV in <DIV><P>This line...</P></DIV> is the first line of the P (assuming that both P and DIV are block-level)."