Width of float no longer shrinks to fit when contents wrap to multiple lines

CSS 2.1 section 10.3.5 Floating, non-replaced elements (http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/visudet.html#float-width) says that:

width = min(max(preferred minimum width, available width), preferred width)

• preferred minimum width = width of one of inner boxes, as they're all the same size.
• available width = width of the page minus margins/borders.
• preferred width = width of all inner boxes side-by-side.

This is completely sane for cases of text wrapping (imagine if the width changed depending on how close the line ends got to the edge of the available space) but not what you want here. I can't see a way to avoid this, though.