Standardizing de-facto behavior built on an optional or undefined specification

I've recently come across several sections of the CSS 2.1 spec [1]  
which describe behavior that is either intentionally undefined or  
optional (per RFC2119), and have already commented on one of these  
issues in a previous email [2].

After some testing, and in both examples, the four main browsers (FF,  
Safari, IE, & Opera) have adopted comparable implementations, and  
appear to exhibit identical behavior. In these cases, I believe it  
would be beneficial to standardize this established behavior in order  
to prevent possible interoperability issues for authors (who have  
become reliant on it), which may arise from retaining the definitions  
found in the current specification.

[1] Scaling of replaced elements (http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/visudet.html#the-width-property 
), position and tiling of 'background-image' applied to inline  
elements (http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/colors.html#background-properties)

[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2009Nov/0324.html

Received on Sunday, 27 December 2009 21:56:48 UTC