- From: Todd Fahrner <fahrner@pobox.com>
- Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 10:38:17 -0700
- To: Chris Lilley <Chris.Lilley@sophia.inria.fr>, www-style@w3.org
At 4:49 PM +0200 6/6/1997, Chris Lilley wrote: > http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1-961217.html#the-cascade > > " The UA may choose to honor other stylistic HTML attributes, for > example 'ALIGN'. If so, these attributes are translated to the > corresponding CSS rules with specificity equal to 1. The rules are > assumed to be at the start of the author style sheet and may be > overridden by subsequent style sheet rules. In a transition phase, > this policy will make it easier for stylistic attributes to coexist > with style sheets. " > > So whether you can over-ride a particular piece of markup depends on > it's specificity. As I read this, all stylistic attributes on HTML elements (as opposed to inline STYLE calls) should always be overridden by author stylesheets, or by user stylesheets where "!important" is declared. > > More troubling, IE4b1 and NS4b5 each have unique sets of > > presentational elements/attributes that CSS can override. NS4, for > > example, will ignore <font size=+1> on an element if CSS specifies a > > fixed size, while IE4 will honor the markup. > > > Fine, notice the "may choose to" No - the UA honors the markup over the author-stylesheet (which has greater specificity because it's later in the cascade). > > There's no apparent > > rhyme or reason. I haven't done an exhaustive survey, but it appears > > that NS4b5 will override presentational markup more often than IE4b1 > > will. > > > > I think CSS should always be able to override all presentational > > markup and attributes, > > It can, by including rules of greater specificity. But the betas are not playing by the rules now. Are you saying authors should have to declare "!important" to override a garden-variety <font> tag? That will munge "!important" declarations in user stylesheets - something not to be undertaken lightly. > > including positioning achieved by means of > > tables. > > perhaps you could give an example here. I know what you mean by > "positioning achieved by means of tables" but I don't see how one could > easily get rid of the effect of the table such that the presentation > is as clean as if the table was not there. Neither do I - yet. Let's say I'm doing margins with empty table cells, with pixel-widths specified (i know, i know - the horror). Could you wrap all the table apparatus in a <span> and set its display to "none"? Then style/position the content with CSS-P? OK, so that's invalid HTML. Or let the table render and simply override with CSS-P?, ignoring the "parent" table element? Many, many authors will care how their documents are rendered in NS 3.0 until CSS browsers achieve better than 80% penetration. I'm exploring transitional strategies. __________________ Todd Fahrner mailto:fahrner@pobox.com http://www.verso.com/
Received on Friday, 6 June 1997 13:38:25 UTC