Re: [css3-ui] drop 'appearance' and related properties

I want to see what the Web Components people are thinking before appearance is changed. Two very separate implementations are using a similar hack.





On Nov 23, 2011, at 8:16 PM, John Daggett <jdaggett@mozilla.com> wrote:

> The CSS3 UI module includes a section entitled "Appearance" (currently
> section 5) [1].  The properties described in this section allow
> arbitrary elements to mimic the appearance/fonts/colors of system UI
> elements.
> 
> I don't see the need for these properties, they originated in an era
> when "themed" system UI's were popular, based on the ability to control
> system UI colors/fonts/appearance at a fine-grained level in Windows and
> other windowing systems.  This begat lots of UI awfulness ("Look Mom,
> all your windows with Halloween colors, wee...").  These days most
> platforms have removed the fine-grained controls (e.g. Windows 7 buries
> these and Windows 8 removes them entirely) and user agents generally try
> to mimic the system-level UI for common elements (buttons, checkboxes,
> etc.).  And HTML5 has expanded the number of controls available to
> authors so there's less need to produce homebrew controls.
> 
> I realize both Webkit and Mozilla include prefixed '-xxx-appearance'
> properties but I'm not sure I see the need to standardize these.  Given
> the current diversity of UI's in use across desktop and mobile platforms
> I think this is difficult to standardize in a way that would really
> serve a worthy purpose.
> 
> I also don't see the need to add more system font names, since many of
> these won't make sense in different contexts.  (And the CSS3 UI spec is
> the wrong place to be defining the 'font' property since it currently
> lives in CSS3 Fonts).
> 
> I think the WG should resolve to drop the properties and additions
> described in this section of CSS3 UI before publishing a new draft.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> John Daggett
> 
> [1] http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-ui/#system-appearance
>

Received on Thursday, 24 November 2011 04:34:57 UTC