Re: CSS 2: priorities in cascading order

I've seen mention of a new ABSOLUTE keyword that would override
IMPORTANT when use in a reader CSS (see attached message).

We could follow-up on that in PF but I sort of feel that the whole
issue of reader CSS is moot.

For one thing, we have yet to see a real system that provides the
reader with style setting using the same language as the author style
(namely CSS in our case) and one could argue whether it's the best
metaphor for end-users.

Instead, I feel that the user will be offered some UI and that
therefore it's in the realm of the WAI browser guidelines to specify
that a way to override/turn off Author style should be provided (no
matter what IMPORTANT properties are there in the file).

This could go a long way toward providing control to the user.

It looks to me that the cascading rules in the CSS spec that talk
about reader vs author priority were just added to gain quick adoption
by the author community, so that they get a certain level of guarantee
that their "artwork" will be what's presented to the user.

But there's nothing that prevent a browser to implement a
user-always-gain policy, and in fact I'm sure it will be driving force
in the browser market.



--- Forwarded mail from neil@bigpic.com

Resent-Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 12:09:47 -0500 (EST)
From: "Neil St.Laurent" <neil@bigpic.com>
To: Liam Quinn <liam@htmlhelp.com>
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 10:14:50 -0600
Reply-to: neil@bigpic.com
CC: www-style@w3.org
Subject: Re: CSS Cascade order and Accessibility
Resent-From: www-style@w3.org
Sender: www-style-request@w3.org

> I think a nice, clean solution would be to suggest (*) that UAs give
> all author rules equal weight--i.e., ignore "!important" in author
> style sheets..

I think I'vem entioned this before, but our attempt at resolving
readers requests will be through a !absolute flag available ONLY in
the readers style sheet.  Given the following reader style sheet:

BODY
 { background: black !absolute;
   color: yellow !absolute; }

The reader, regardless of !important's and otehr author changes, will
always see their text in yellow on black.
__
| Mortar: Advanced Web Development <http://mortar.bigpic.com/>
| Neil St.Laurent                  <mailto:stlaurent@bigpic.com>
| Big Picture Multimedia



---End of forwarded mail from neil@bigpic.com

Received on Wednesday, 17 December 1997 09:44:14 UTC