Re: concern about CSSStyleDeclaration

On Tue, 17 Apr 2001, Daniel Glazman wrote:
>>
>> Permitting multiple instances on the same property in a rule will mislead
>> the CSS author. He will never be able to use them with a CSS engine.
>
> Really ? What if the rule contains the 'margin' shorthand and the
> 'margin-bottom-width' property ?

Then, according to the DOM, asking for the value of 'margin' will return
'', and asking for style.cssText will return a gazillion shorthand
properties. That's the CSSOM for you...

Another great problem with the CSSOM:

  p { color: green; border-top-color: red; border: solid; }

...what's the value of 'border-top-color' for that declaration if you ask
for it via the CSSOM? According to the spec, ''.

Now if we have:

  p { color: green; }

...what's the value of 'border-top-color' for _this_ declaration? ''.

How can you tell if 'border-top-color' is set? (Hint. In the first
declaration, it is set twice.)

This issue was originally raised by David Baron many moons ago, although
I've never seen a response to it.


(Note for those not familiar with the CSS spec: the first example sets the
value of 'border-*-color' to its initial value, which is defined as being
whatever the value of the color property is. Thus the color of the border
would be green, not red.)

-- 
Ian Hickson                                            )\     _. - ._.)   fL
Invited Expert, CSS Working Group                     /. `- '  (  `--'
The views expressed in this message are strictly      `- , ) -  > ) \
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