Re: Shadows.

Benjamin Franz writes:

 > > > I don't suppose it would be possible to throw in "shadow"
 > > > among the "text-decoration" properties in CSS1 to help
 > > > alleviate the rash of pages we are seeing with duplicated text?
 > > 
 > > What kind of duplicated text would this be, and what kind of shadow
 > > should you get with this decoration? I've never seen the problem you
 > > describe, as far as I can remember.
 > 
 > Try <URL:http://www.netimages.com/~snowhare/anime/> for what he means. 
 > 'Floating' text and images are *very* common on the web right now.  I
 > would save uncounted bytes if I could somehow specify that I wanted text
 > or images to 'float' with a dropshadow (with some control over opacity,
 > 'bluriness', x-y offset etc of the shadow.). 

Yes. Shadows are an issue of style and should be addressed in CSS. The
used of duplicate text/negative margins to achieve this is not a good
thing as several people have noted. How about:

  text-decoration: shadow(red, 0.1em, 0.2em);

The functional notation is already in use for rgb and url values. This
would place a red shadow offset 0.1 em in the x direction and 0.2 em
in the y direction. As Benjamin notes, one may want influence over
more parameters. This could be achieved by adding more (optional)
parameters:

  text-decoration: shadow(red, 0.1em, 0.2em, 70%, 30%);

  /* color, x-offset, y-offset, transparency, bluriness */

In this scheme of variable number of arguments, this would also be
allowed:

  text-decoration: shadow;

The browser should then choose reasonable default values. Another
issue is multiple shadows:

  text-decoration: shadow(red, 0.1em, 0.2em) shadow(blue, 0.2em, 0.1em);

This is also in line with CSS which has an implicit AND between
multi-value decalrations. The Z-order would be implicit from the order
of the values.

What do people think?

-h&kon

Hakon W Lie, W3C/INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis, France
http://www.w3.org/people/howcome  howcome@w3.org

Received on Tuesday, 6 August 1996 09:08:36 UTC