Comments URI Proposal

What if CSS encouraged a comment authoring practice, and/or
permitted use of a 'comment' property with a value holding a URI
for an external comment file? Authors could place notes and
commented-out sections there.

An optional external comment file could add maintenance overhead,
and could fail to connect in the future. On the other hand, only
used style rules would have to be downloaded with every page
access, and it could please users who wouldn't have to read about
browser shortcomings unless they want to [1].

Examples:

/* COMMENTS <URL:http://www.example.com/css/comments.htm> */

comments {url(http://www.example.com/css/comments.htm)}

Each byte saved behind the scenes counts toward a better user
impression of a Web site [2], and toward the design goal
sometimes termed "fast-loading." Maybe external comments are only
an idea I want to use someday, or maybe they are an idea for the
CSS2 language specification.

[1] "Avoid talking about mechanics" from T.Berners-Lee,
    "Style Guide for online hypertext" (pre-CSS, from 1992-1995)
    <http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/NoMechanics.html>
[2] "Response Times," from J.Nielsen, _Usability Engineering_
    (from Miller 1968; Card et al. 1991)
    <http://www.useit.com/papers/responsetime.html>

Susan Lesch

Received on Sunday, 15 February 1998 22:39:15 UTC