Re: visibility of elements

I have a relativly stupid question here. Do we want to do a take off
on Netscape's Layers stuff? 

Here's my reasoning.

a) Hiding stuff is fine, but why put it in a document if it will
always be hidden?

b) Netscape created layers and JSS stuff to dynamically change the
layout (ie make things visible or invisible at the click of a mouse
instead of regenerating the page). In reality one of my favorite 
Javascript snipits does just that (ie expand/contract levels on 
a navigation menu).

c) Since I can't think of a good way to have this visibility thing be
useful in a static way, and if you are talking dynamic, Netscape is
doing similar things already, I'd rather work towards a common solution,
not have two separate but equal ways of doing things.

I'm not saying that I agree with what Netscape is doing in all areas,
just that I'm tired of the standards wars (defacto vs official).

As for the folding and outline, I'd need to see it in action. I'm 
not really visualizing this well right now. (ie I can see places
where only part of something would be "expanded" such as expanding 
the discussion on a particular thread while keeping all others
closed.

Also, having spent a month teaching in ZDU's online classrooms, I'd say that
folded needs to have more than just "outline". I can see folded=2
or something like that to say display the first two levels and 
fold below that. I can also see folded=CLASSNAME and then a classname
definition that would define unfolding to what classname. (ie fold
everything up, but unfold items to class name "hint", so that people
can go and see everything up to a teacher's hint or answer. At this
point this is all brainstorming, but I think that the outline needs
to be able to define levels of folding based upon both numeric values
and unfolding to a specific type of info.

Mary E. S. Morris

> > I think that we could have a new property named "visibility" that could
> > have 3 values: "invisible", "folded", "normal".
> 
> See,s to me that there are really two different things here.  One
> is whether the element is rendered,  that's adequately covered by
> display.  display: none should tell the UA not to display the specified
> selector.  (I confess that I haven't implemented it yet,  but it is in
> the spec)
> 
> .nodisplay { display: none }
> 
> ...
> 
> <P CLASS=nodisplay>This paragraph won't be shown by the user agent </P>
> 
> >...
> > with a CSS. With this feature, one could also tell that the lists of his
> > document are folded, when the document is loaded, so that the reader have
> > a more general view of the document when it first appears.
> 
> I think this would be an interesting feature.  I'd add a new property
> which applied to block level elements.  Something like display-style:
> outline or display-style: normal.  You could also extend display by
> adding outline as a new type to block and list-item.
> 
> Something like:
> 
> OL, UL { display: outline }
> 
> and now all OL or UL elements rendered with some sort of expand/contract
> control.
> 
> Doug
> -- 
> Doug Rand				drand@sgi.com
> Silicon Graphics/Silicon Desktop	http://reality.sgi.com/drand
> Disclaimer: These are my views,  SGI's views are in 3D
> 
>

Received on Monday, 24 February 1997 16:17:00 UTC