Re: Horizontal rules

On 18-Feb-00, Matthew Brealey wrote:

>> [...] an author using HR together with floats (Img with Align set to
>> Left or Right) will get a counterintuitive result, 
> No, the result is fine.

hmm... I don't really agree if you by 'fine' mean 'visually nice' -- but if
necessary then I will indulge you, as I don't opt for anarchy when deciding
the render model ;-)

> The one circumstance that I think is potentially problematic is where an
> image has some degree of transparency.

Or if it had instead been a table with alignment (which makes the table float).
Imagine a page which has a navigation table floating to the right of the text,
with border and a background colour -- using a HR in the main text will IMO
look like a render bug...

> However, this problem is removed if
> you give the image a background (although I'm not sure whether backgrounds
> are supported on transparent images by any or many browsers).

I map images to an inline box with the background-image set to that of the SRC
argument (and set a private property to indicate that the potential alpha mask
of the image should be respected) so here it would be possible for the user to
supply a background-color. Speaking of which, normally I ignore transparency
masks for 'background-image', as the user rarely want a background transparent
(atleast not for the root element) but is this correct?

But back to the subject; I think a transparent image most oftenly wants the
parent elements background to shine through, this applies to tables as well.

And there's also the problem that the border of the HR will be nicely 3D
rounded at (for the exmple) the right side, but it will come to a clash with
the image, at the left side, which IMHO gives an unpleasing asymmetrical look.
Also the way that the ruler may stick out to the left of the image (depending
on the image's margin) isn't nice...

May I suggest adding a keyword for the margin, as described earlier, i.e. one
that says the margin should be the sum of the widths for the currently
floating objects (to either or both sides) perhaps with the ability to add
some extra units.  That way the user will be able to define the HR to look
exactly as currently rendered by non CSS user agents -- which AFAIK is
currently impossible to do with CSS.

Regards Allan
-- 
     URL: http://www.DIKU.dk/students/duff/
<sb>
Entropy isn't what it used to be.

Received on Friday, 18 February 2000 15:00:20 UTC