Re: [css3-ui] Proposal for an "overlay" value for 'overflow'

On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 8:46 AM, Sylvain Galineau
<sylvaing@microsoft.com> wrote:
> [François REMY:]
>>
>> For what it's worth, Microsoft has its own proprietary property to achieve
>> this:
>>
>>     -ms-overflow-style:
>>         | auto
>>         | scrollbar
>>         | -ms-autohiding-scrollbar
>>
>>     http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh441298.aspx
>>
>> I believe it should be possible to standardize both at the same time
>> ('overflow: overlay' being standardized as a shorthand for 'overflow:
>> auto; overflow-style: overlay' or 'overflow: scroll; overflow-style:
>> overlay').
>>
> Yes; and I don't think of overlay or auto-hide scrollbars or any other
> possible ways scrollbars can show and layout as an overflow value.
>
> I think of the overflow property as answering basic questions about overflow
> *content*: does it spill out or is it clipped? If it's clipped, can you always
> scroll to the overflow or does the UA decide? Other properties should then
> define more details about the scrolling mechanism, if any.

I'm fine with slicing up the 'overflow' property into a better
theoretical structure of sub-properties.  It makes a lot of sense to
me.  I agree that an "overlay" value is of a conceptually different
type than "hidden" or "visible", and so having it expand into
different sub-properties than the latter ones would makes sense.


> Note: auto-hide scrollbars are of course overlay, and I think this is where
> the concept makes the most sense as I'm not sure why you'd want scrollbars
> that are always present *and* hide some of your content. Whereas you definitely
> want them to have no effect on layout if they're only visible during user
> interaction.

Auto-hiding overlay scrollbars are strictly better than always-visible
overlay scrollbars, I agree.  But I made a case up above why even an
always-visible one is useful in some cases - if you want the aesthetic
quality that scrollbars don't show up when the page is sufficiently
short, but also don't want the geometry of the page to change when
they do show up, and your design can easily accommodate a permanent
20px or so gutter on one side (pretty common), then they're useful.
So, even if we can't decide to add scrollbars that are *specially*
auto-hiding, the mere property of them being overlay can be useful to
expose.

~TJ

Received on Friday, 25 January 2013 18:40:45 UTC