Split Horizontal & Vertical Visibility Values

Andrew n marshall writes:

 > I would like to see visibility split into two properties: 
 > 'horizontal-visibility' and 'vertical-visibility' (with the possibility of 
 > leaving in the current property as a shortcut).  With these, an author can 
 > make an element not visible, but still have a presence "felt" in the layout 
 > in a particular direction.
 > 
 > A good use of this is a tree control (like those on ms.com's sidebar) whose 
 > width is guaranteed not to change as branches are dynamically hidden and 
 > shown (therefore avoiding nasty reformatting artifacts/flickers).

I'm catching up on www-style and the above message seems to be referred
to several times. I see the need for avoiding reflows, but doesn't the
'width' property of CSS1 cover this case? E.g. you can explicitly set
the width of the element:

 DIV { width: 10em }

Further, the proposed 'min-width' and 'max-width' allows the designer
to set more constraints. Do you have an example which isn't covered
by these?

-h&kon

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