Re: Flexbox Draft, with pictures!

On Wed, 26 May 2010 08:52:12 +0100, Anne van Kesteren <annevk@opera.com>  
wrote:

> On Wed, 26 May 2010 03:00:19 +0200, David Hyatt <hyatt@apple.com> wrote:
>> I'm not saying "box" is great and would welcome other suggestions, but  
>> flexing is a property of the children, not of the container.  The  
>> container itself doesn't flex.  Calling something a "flex" because the  
>> children inside it get flexed seems weird to me.

Fact is, people in the wild are already using "flexbox" as the term to  
describe the Flexible Box Model. It may well be uncomfortable but it's  
like "alt tag" - drives me nuts every time I hear it, and I hear it every  
day.

This is where the educators like me have to mind the gap. It's no one's  
fault, but I doubt it's stoppable at this point. I think the best thing we  
can do is simply not use flexbox in any public documentation and always  
write out "Flexible Box Model." If we are speaking of flexing the children  
of the container box, then we should simply say "the child can flex to  
portions of the containing box"

To imply terminology doesn't matter (looking at Anne) is absolutely false  
when it comes to offering information to the masses. Maybe it doesn't  
matter as much to implementers, who of course are focused on building  
software. But David's concerns here are an exact manifestation of unclear  
nomenclature passing from the W3C into the world.

Molly

-- 
Molly E. Holzschlag
Web Evangelist, Developer Relations, Americas
Member, W3C CSS Working Group
Opera Software mollyh@opera.com
"Follow the Standards / Break the Rules"
http://dev.opera.com/ http://molly.com/

Received on Wednesday, 26 May 2010 09:26:00 UTC