Re: CSS 2: priorities in cascading order

My thinking in this area is moving toward embracing the proposal of
including an extra key word in CSS 2 (such as !required; as Al has
suggested). The main reason for this stems from the specificity problem.
As discussed in an earlier example, the desired effect is that the user's
requirement should take precedence over all of the author's rules,
including those which would otherwise have greater specificity. The
!important key word currently has no impact on specificity. Thus, an extra
directive could be defined which (1) only has effect when it occurs in a
user's style sheet; and (2) ensures that the rule to which it applies has
priority over such of the author's rules as would otherwise have greater
specificity.

I would envisage the priority scheme as follows:

User Required
Author Important
User Important
Author Required Author Normal
User Normal

This retains existing priorities, but adds "user required" at the top of
the hierarchy, as well as changing the specificity rules.

I would favour a key word such as "!required" rather than
"!accessibility".

Received on Sunday, 21 December 1997 18:41:59 UTC