Re: [css3-flexbox] New WD "CSS Flexible Box Layout"

On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 4:15 PM, Robert O'Callahan<robert@ocallahan.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 2:27 AM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> The one thing that I noticed I've done with floats but can't reproduce
>> with flexboxes is having two sets of boxes, one packed to the left and
>> the other packed to the right.  I believe that XUL devs usually use a
>> <spacer> with a higher box-ordinal to achieve this effect, right?
>
> They usually use a spacer and manually order the content. box-ordinal is
> almost never used by XUL developers. I suppose it might find more use on the
> Web, where you have to deal with fallback in other browsers and a stronger
> separation of style from content --- but I think the value of box-ordinal is
> still an open question at this point.

Yeah, a non-flexing box basically has -infinity box-ordinal.

I agree that, as written, box ordinal seems essentially useless.
Right now the highest-ordinal boxes are allowed to suck up all of the
extra space, leaving the lesser-ordinal boxes no space at all,
essentially making them box-flex:0.  Is it required that boxes suck up
the extra space in exactly the proportion specified?  Frex, if you
have two boxes with the same box-flex, but an odd number of free
pixels to distribute, is there a single pixel left over to distribute
to lesser-ordinal boxes?

This would prove useful, though, if you could flex by specified
amounts only.  Frex, you want a box to flex, but only in 10px
increments.  Then you'd actually have leftover flex to distribute to
the lower ordinal boxes sometimes.

I'll write up a separate email about this.

~TJ

Received on Sunday, 26 July 2009 21:42:31 UTC