RE: The "title" attribute of "style" elements

Ian Hickson [mailto:py8ieh@bath.ac.uk] wrote:
On Fri, 5 Nov 1999, Chris Wilson wrote:
>> Indeed; you've pointed out the major incompatibility between the
>> HTML 4.0 specification and the "HTML and Style Sheets" draft...
>"It is inappropriate to use W3C Working Drafts as reference material
>or to cite them as other than "work in progress"."

Whatever.  Without utilizing that draft, we would have been unable to
associate stylesheets with documents until December 18, 1997 - which means
the first release that could possibly have had stylesheets support would
have been IE 5.0, released in March of this year.  Instead, we had two major
releases that had some stylesheet support, and we've driven the acceptance
of stylesheets across the board.

>> how would you make a PREFERRED EMBEDDED style sheet?
>
>Just give it a title. ("name the style sheet with the title
>attribute") The real question is how to make the style element an
>alternate stylesheet, and not a preferred one. The answer is, include
>it after any other link or style elements with titles (since it has no
>'rel' attribute).

No, that would make it a preferred sheet; as you yourself have pointed out,
just because a stylesheet is preferred does not mean it's automatically
applied, according to HTML 4.0:

>>>#        + To make a style sheet preferred, set the rel attribute to
>>>#          "stylesheet" and name the style sheet with the title
>>>#          attribute.
 
>> <STYLE TITLE="foo"> would, in this proposal, be an alternate, but
>> not preferred, therefore not automatically loaded.
>
>No, it would be preferred if it came before any other preferred
>stylesheets. Just like a <LINK> stylesheet with a TITLE attribute but
>no "alternate" in the REL attribute.

Then there's no difference between a preferred and an alternate sheet.

>I intended to propose behaviour whereby the
>'title' attribute of STYLE elements is treated _identically_ to the
>'title' attribute of LINK elements, and that all STYLE elements are
>assumed to be "rel=stylesheet".

I think we've beaten this particular horse to death.  I cannot support a
proposal that would be so backwards-incompatible with the practice we've had
in place for, oh, three years or so.  I agree the TITLE grouping in STYLE
elements would be a useful thing; given the change in behavior of
"preferred" sheets between the draft and the HTML 4.0 Rec, however, I cannot
support that, and I'd be forced to recommend that Microsoft vote against it.

-Chris

Received on Thursday, 11 November 1999 12:56:23 UTC