Re: inline CSS (was: is anyone interested in XHTML?)

On Tue, 22 Feb 2000, Sal Candido wrote:

> [if] I want to override the values in the [external] style sheet,
> why should I have to bother with the <style> element? Why
> shouldn't I just be able to use the style attribute?

One reason that comes to mind is that, *going forward*, CSS isn't the
only stylesheet language that's going to be around.  This is the same
problem as the event attributes all being Javascript-specific today.
The contents of the style attribute are necessarily notation-specific,
but there are no obvious means of determining what that notation is.
So, what entitles anyone (including software) to simply - or is it
blithely! - *assume* that the contents of the attribute are in fact
CSS, and not some other language?

In fact, that's a *silly* assumption in the longer haul.

> Is there that great a difference in using the style attribute
> rather than id'ing the element and then applying styles in the
> <style> element other than it is redundant and annoying to do the
> latter?

Actually, ID-selectors in CSS make the style attribute redundant and
annoying:)

Interestingly enough, if we were still talking about SGML (which has
something called DATA attributes), you'd have a much stronger case.
XML is forcing some hard choices.


Arjun

Received on Wednesday, 23 February 2000 00:17:43 UTC