Re: CSS, certain "presentational" attributes and HTML5

Wasn't able to get to this for a while, too much other stuff to do . . .

On Sat, Apr 9, 2011 at 7:06 PM, Leif Halvard Silli
<xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no> wrote:
> a) OK - could be that you are right - needs a certain amount of
>   time to test it...

It's pretty clear.

> b) But perhaps CSS needs to change then?

Maybe, but until then, <center> should be out IMO.

> In regard of b), then Boris acknowledged that even the effect of
> table@border can't be caught by the current CSS:
>
>> http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=12413 [...]
>> --- Comment #4 from Boris Zbarsky … 2011-04-04 21:35:07 UTC ---
>> For what it's worth, you can't do the desired thing here with CSS.  Gecko
>> implemented a custom pseudo-class called :-moz-table-border-nonzero to match
>> tables with a border attribute set.  For example, border=" 0 " needs to be
>> treated just like border="0", and there's no way to do that in CSS.

That's not really an incompatibility in the semantics, more like in
the syntax.  Any given <table border> can be expressed just as well in
pure CSS, it's just that you can't do one set of rules to cover all
border values, using attr() or such.  I'd still object to legacy
parsing if it were particularly horrible, like <font color>, but
<table border> is parsed pretty sanely, so I don't think it's a big
deal.  Particularly not when only the value "1" is allowed, so it's
really just a talisman of sorts.

> Do you object to anything that isn't possible to express via (today's)
> CSS?

I see it as a large strike against allowing it, yes.  It complicates
the mental model of web pages if authors have to learn two separate
styling systems.

> Btw, seem Google Docs is another one using <center> (in combination
> with HTML4 as well as HTML5 Doctype). E.g. see source of
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/.

Yeah, <center> is extremely useful.  One of the recurring gripes
people have always had about CSS is that it's not as easy to center
things as using <center>.  But I'd prefer to improve CSS to fix that,
not re-permit <center>.

Received on Friday, 15 April 2011 22:44:46 UTC