RE: CSS1, new draft specification

Chris Wilson writes:

 > I don't like the disappearance of the $CANVAS.  Saying that "In HTML, the 
 > BODY element is given this role" (of acting as the container for all 
 > elements) falls down when you think about the effects of the default 
 > stylesheet on HTML 2.0 documents that do not have a <BODY> (or a <HEAD>, or 
 > an <HTML>).

The reason for changing it is that people are growing accustomed to
setting color/background in the BODY element:

  <BODY BGCOLOR=#ffffff>

This would easily be translated into:

  <BODY STYLE="background: #ffffff">

As we know, there are better alternatives than the STYLE attribute,
but as long as it's there one should be able to set the background
using it. To set "$CANVAS", a proper style sheet is required. 

 > The "sidehead" and simple multiple-column effects are an ugly way to achieve 
 > that effect.  [..]  I'm not saying 
 > explicitly disallow it, just not suggest it as a solution for multicolumn 
 > layouts.

Ok. I agree that "multi-column layout" is setting expectations too
high. The sidehead/sidenote effect is a more reasonable target.

 > >  - For font-weight and font-size, I appreciate that you've moved from
 > >    absolute numbers to relative ones.  I'm a little concerned,
 > >    though, that it may not be intuitive that a bare positive number
 > >    means an increase.  I would suggest either requiring "1
 > >    larger/smaller" ("1 bolder/lighter") or requiring that positive
 > >    increments be prefixed by a plus sign ("font-weight: +2").
 > 
 > I vote for the second option: relative numbers should be required to be 
 > prefixed with + or -.

One can suggest the use of +/-, but requireing the '+' would conflict
with the planned expressions of CSS2. What do you do when the value is
not a fixed number but the result of an expression?

 > >  - for padding, you say "the color of the padding area is controlled
 > >    with the 'background' property".  Wouldn't it be reasonable to add
 > >    a "padding" pseudo-class.

If you want a differently colored border around an element, you
should use the border-* properties. One could argue that 'border'
should be a pseudo-class (P:border { color: red}), but I prefer to
reserve pseudo-classes for effects that cannot easily be achived in
other ways.

Regards,

-h&kon

Hakon W Lie, W3C/INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis, France
http://www.w3.org/People/howcome  howcome@w3.org

Received on Friday, 5 January 1996 05:46:43 UTC