Re: Access to element styles?

----- Original Message -----
From: L. David Baron <dbaron@fas.harvard.edu>
To: <www-dom@w3.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 11, 1999 3:17 PM
Subject: Access to element styles?


> Are there any plans for the DOM Level 2 to allow access to the CSS
> properties of a specific element?  The DOM Level 1 hinted at this in a
> comment [1] that the style attribute of the HTMLElement interface was
> reserved for future use.  Could this style attribute be of type
> CSS2Properties [2]?  (Yes, I know that limits the style language.
> Perhaps there should be access to the Content-Style-Type first set by a
> META or HTTP header.  But then the property names are messy.  Would
> part of it be better off being a function that adds a declaration to a
> STYLE attribute?)

Why not just have it take a string value, the same way the STYLE attribute
does?

> The specificity of a rule created through such an interface, should
> probably be the same as if it were a STYLE attribute.

Yup.

>  See my post [3]
> on why the specificity of the STYLE attribute should be changed (to
> the way it is implemented in browsers).

What we're really missing here is a binding between a scripting language and
the style sheet. The DOM, as it stands, provides dynamic documents. Is there
a demand for dynamic style sheets? Is there a place for

    @script(stylemebaby.js);

in the new world order?

I'm not claiming the answer's "yes", but given browser developers'
initiative in shoehorning a CSS-esque syntax into their DOM implementations
(where I think it *really* doesn't belong), I think the question bears
asking.

Braden