Re: table backgrounds

On Sat, 5 Jun 1999 15:23:26 +0000 (UTC), Tim Bagot (tsb@earth.li)
wrote:
> On Sat, 5 Jun 1999, Braden N. McDaniel wrote:
> > I'd suggest that it makes the most sense to put the columns on "bottom" with
> > row groups and rows on top of them. While this proposal is largely arbitrary
> > (it just seems most intuitive to me this way), a possible rationale is that
> > COL and COLGROUP come before the rows in the table description.
> 
> This is in fact what happens with CSS2. It is defined in section 17.5.1 of
> the CSS2 recommendation
> (<URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/tables.html#table-layers>). 
> 
> I assume that this behaviour can be modified with the z-index property.

That's an interesting question.  The z-index property only applies to
positioned elements [1].  (I think the unstated assumption in that
section is that non-positioned elements have z-index set to 'auto' and
are thus stacked in document order, according to the rules in section
9.5 or 17.5.1 or elsewhere(?).)  A element with table display type
could not be absolutely positioned (because then it would lose its
table display type [2]), but it can be relatively positioned.

However, it's still unclear whether the rules in 17.5.1 would override
the rules given in 9.9.  I tend to think they do not, since the rules
in 9.5 and 17.5.1 are just the meaning of "z-index: auto".  I think
something in section 9.9 should state more clearly what/where the
default rules for z-ordering are for non-positioned elements and
whether 'auto' is equivalent to those rules.

If this is true, then the behavior of table stacking would be
modifiable using z-index if the table elements are relatively
positioned (hopefully with zero offsets), but could lead to very
strange results if the cells aren't placed on top.

David

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/visuren.html#z-index
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/visuren.html#q24

L. David Baron      Freshman, Harvard      dbaron@fas.harvard.edu
Links, SatPix, CSS, etc.  < http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~dbaron/ >
WSP CSS AC                   < http://www.webstandards.org/css/ >

Received on Saturday, 5 June 1999 11:41:52 UTC