Re: [CSS3] Content to appear twice

On Wed, 3 Dec 2003, Matthias P. Wuerfl wrote:
>> How would you cope with the following case?:
>>
>>    <applet src="some-plugin" id="foo"/>
>>    <div/>
>>    <div/>
>>
>> ...with:
>>
>>    div { duplicate-the-element-here: 'foo'; }
>>
>> ...?
>
> I don't know. Should I? :-)

If you want to propose that content appears twice, yes, because we don't
have a good answer. :-)


> As far as i can focus on the problem as a not-programmer and a
> just-web-author there are 3 possibilities:
>
> 1 showing one applet twice (or thrice) (the Browser could simply "copy"
>    the "look" of the "area". Reaction on Input is shown thrice.)

That is impossible to implement in common scenarios (e.g.  direct-to-
video-RAM movie playback plugins).


> 2 having the applet thrice on the page (just as if it was 3 times in the
>    HTML-Source)

That doesn't work in terms of the DOM.


> 3 saying "this only works for ul, p, div,..." in the specs and waiting
>    for ideas to appear later.

So how should UAs implement it?


>> It also seems odd from a DOM point of view -- what's the offsetTop of a
>> <div> that is painted twice?
>
> My Idea was to have an "original" and a "copy". Of course those things
> have to deal with the original. Sorry, but i don't know DOM good enough
> to understand the problem.

That is part of the problem. :-)


>> Yeah, that can be a problem... you could include the header twice
> [...]
>> and define the header outside the markup.
>
> That's what i don't want to. Things like the Naviation belong to the
> HTML-Code. This works with all UAs. Solutions that are not compatible
> with former standards (or Web Culture) are not acceptable for me as author.

A fair point.


I'll bear this in mind when working on the CSS3 Generated Content module.
I agree that it would be beneficial to be able to do this. Maybe something
like XBL could be used.

Cheers,
-- 
Ian Hickson                                      )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
U+1047E                                         /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
http://index.hixie.ch/                         `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Monday, 29 December 2003 21:19:02 UTC