Re: 'style' attribute

Brian Bober wrote:
> ** W3 could define higher-level style languages that are defined in terms of
> CSS and a browser could convert to CSS much like programming languages can be
> compiled to assembler **
> <snip/>
> We only have CSS. If we had higher-level
> styling languages, people could use a combination of them, perhaps, in order to
> facilitate things they need to do. i.e, there could be perhaps a styling
> language that allows you to center a block simply with one property as opposed
> to doing the "margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto"...

   All we need for this is better authoring tools!  Authors who can't 
understand some of the more advanced features of CSS like the box model, 
compared with the easier font and colour properties, should be able to 
get an authoring tool to write the correct CSS for them to achieve their 
desired result.  Thus, there should be no need for a new higher-level 
language, which many will find just as confusing as CSS, no matter how 
simple you try and make it.

   The problem is that popular authoring tools like Dreamweaver, 
Frontpage and Word, quite often, for the average user, apply style only 
to the current selection, rather than to the elements, classes or ids. 
Word does have the "Styles and Formatting" task pane which, as I've said 
before, is closer to what we need, but most average users don't know how 
to use it anyway.

   I believe authoring tools need to be configured so that the user has 
no choice but to apply style based on elements, classes and/or ids. 
They should have little, or no ability to just format some selected text 
with individual properties, since it is equivalent to writing <font> or 
<span style="...">.

-- 
Regards,
Lachlan Hunt

Received on Thursday, 26 February 2004 03:40:48 UTC