New pseudoclass, :first-use

  I write about old videogames, and in order to keep the layout clean I use
the DFN tag on the name of the game's I'm talking about where they appear in
the body of the page. Of course DFN isn't really the right tag to use, but
it doesn't seem like there's any other one better suited to my needs.  I
have considered making my own tag, but I'll try that some other time.

  One problem is that I only use DFN on the first occurance of the "term"
(the game's name) which is basically the whole idea of DFN, and the way I
want to use it. As a result if I do even basic editing I often have to move
the DFN'ed game title around by hand. This is rather annoying.

  I would suggest the addition of a new pseudo-class for solving this
problem, perhaps :first-use.  This selector could be applied to any tag, and
when doing so only the first occurance of that tag within the document would
have that style applied. To use this, authors would use a stylesheet similar
to...

GAME:first-use { font: italic 150% sans-serif }

  I certainly won't claim to speak for others, but I know such a construct
would help my web authoring considerably. Perhaps first-occurance or some
other name for the selector would be better however.

Maury

Received on Friday, 25 August 2000 19:26:04 UTC