Re: Scrollbars, olive color, maximum viewport width

Gérard Talbot wrote:
>
>>> Ideally, the tests should not rely on the Uncommon Assumptions, and if they
>>> do, that should be indicated in the test.
> 
> Good enough then. I will add such PREREQUISITE in/for each and all tests
> requiring it.

See also below.

> Well then why not
> 
> <meta name="prerequisite" content="User agent needs to support
> scrollbars as the scrolling mechanism. If it does not, then this test
> case does not apply to this user agent.">
> 
> or
> 
> even add "scrollbars" as another possible token in the set of
> "Requirement Flags"
> http://wiki.csswg.org/test/css2.1/format#requirement-flags
> 
> <meta name="assumption" content="..."> is another possibility and is ok
> with me.

The metadata in the test isn't visible to the tester, so it's more
metadata isn't always a good solution. In most cases, a test for
scrollbar behavior will pass on a UA that scrolls but has no
scrollbars -- and ideally tests should be designed that way. In
cases where the test will fail when scrollbars are not present,
then the tester needs to be alerted so that he doesn't mark the
test as failing when it simply doesn't apply.

A number of the existing flags are there so that a tester can filter
out tests that don't apply. There's some cognitive overhead in
having a flag, so I'd prefer to avoid adding a flag and using the
descriptive text instead if there's only one or two tests in the
suite that might require it.

>>> That's probably a good idea. Do you have some recommendations?
>> I second this. I would suggest standardizing the term, 'scrolling
>> mechanism' as I believe it describes in a concise manner, the
>> mechanism that is being described, and I also believe it's a term what
>> would be clearly understood by reviewers. This term is also flexible
>> enough to allow it to be extended to cover axis-specific scrolling,
>> and active/inactive mechanisms; for example, "active scrolling
>> mechanism along the x-axis", "inactive scrolling mechanism along the y-
>> axis", etc.
> 
> What other scrolling mechanism should we assume (or expect) can be
> tested by the CSS 2.1 test suite? And how can we test this? The CSS 2.1
> test suite mentions "panner" [1] as a possible scrolling mechanism.

We don't have to test the scrolling mechanism itself, we just need to
test that scrolling works and the rendering behaves as CSS2.1 requires.
Most tests should be scrolling-mechanism-agnostic; so we need standard
wording that is also scrolling-mechanism-agnostic.

I'm not sure if I answered all your questions, let me know if I missed
anything.

~fantasai

Received on Monday, 21 December 2009 09:00:56 UTC