- From: sarony via GitHub <noreply@w3.org>
- Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2025 18:23:59 +0000
- To: public-css-archive@w3.org
Wrote a [blog post](https://webkit.org/blog/17417/position-area-clear-and-explicit-or-short-and-sweet/) to explain the proposed change to get author feedback and got the following responses from social media, some from prominent devs. Author 1: “When I first used anchor positioning, this exact issue of not knowing what we're spanning was confusing. Even now, it still doesn't make sense. So it's a big yes from me!” Author 2: “It is rather confusing to know exactly what the property value does at first glance without having to look up MDN constantly or get used to it overtime through practice. I don't agree with its current naming convention. It can be confusing compared to some CSS layout properties like align-items and justify-content that would let you know at first glance where your items are stacked. However, the learning curve is just a small sacrifice if a renaming has to be done to its suggested one. It seems verbose IMO. Can't we make it shorter? Isn't there a way? If that caveat is removed, I'm down for a name change!“ Author 3: “I think it’s fine as-is. I think because it can’t not be the center, or it’d be span-all, it’s okay to go for brevity.” Author 4: “I would love it if center was a part of the property! I didn’t understand how spanning worked in this context before this blog post 😅“ Author 5: “Quite clear; better longer but immediately understandable.” Author 6: “Honestly I don't mind the current syntax. It makes sense that center is the default (all the other potential values would be biased in some way to a direction). And adding center- as a prefix would be pretty verbose.” Author 7: “I typically prefer verbosity if it gets me clarity, but after reading: developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/W... And knowing that there is "an implicit 3x3 grid" and "the anchoring element is the center cell", the shorter `span-inline-end` tells me exactly what is happening." Author 8: “At first I thought being explicit would be the easy answer. I generally like explicitness. In this case, however, now that I’ve seen the options and the constraints (always only ever 3 rows/columns), I actually don’t mind the current spec.” Author 9: “Definitely was confused by the property name, when reading the earlier WebKit post. I wish there was a concise way of being clear (nothing. Iles to mind) but the current one does lack clarity to me!” Author 10: “clear and explicit FTW” **Question:** Even those who don't like the change concede that the current naming is confusing, especially at first. As such, would it make sense to add center-span-* as an alias of span-* to make it easier for authors to learn this feature? -- GitHub Notification of comment by sarony Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/12683#issuecomment-3504113461 using your GitHub account -- Sent via github-notify-ml as configured in https://github.com/w3c/github-notify-ml-config
Received on Friday, 7 November 2025 18:24:00 UTC