RE: BGSOUND, no need for it

On Sat, 24 Aug 1996, Paul Prescod wrote:

> "Tags" are always supposed to define structure. BGSOUND is a presentational
> attribute. It might make sense to make it an attribute of BODY, or a CSS
> property of BODY. As a CSS property, it could be used more generally, for
> instance as a way of "attaching" sound to hypertext links, or even to page
> actions: I could imagine properties like:
> 
> page-load-sound
> page-leave-sound
> follow-internal-link-sound
> follow-external-link-sound
> while-page-downloads-sound
> 
> You could even have a different sound for every link on your page.
> 
> Once sounds were in a stylesheet, the user could enable or disable them
> selectively by overriding the stylesheet. You could also use the same
> "soundsheet" for hundreds of pages on a web site, and change them all in one
> central location.
> 
> Finally, the style-sheet mechanism allows background sounds to be added to
> any SGML DTD, not just HTML. All in all, style sheets are the best place to
> put background sounds.

I agree to the idea of sounds in a stylesheet, but not in CSS1. CSS has been
designed to carry a DTP metaphor to HTML rendering. A different kind of
stylesheet that can be attached via the STYLE tag etc. (with a different
MIME type of course) is what is needed.

One question, slightly relevant:

The STYLE tag lets you specify content type so that the UA can know what
language the stylesheet is in. How come the STYLE *attribute* doesn't? What
if a browser supports DSSSL and CSS1 and something else as well? How does it
distinguish which language the directives in a STYLE attribute are?

= Stephanos Piperoglou = stephanos@hol.gr = http://users.hol.gr/~stephanos/ =
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Received on Wednesday, 28 August 1996 05:49:59 UTC