Stretchy backgrounds? (background-width,height properties)

Some time ago, I posted in the n.p.mozilla.style newsgroup a question
that boiled down to "Does CSS support background-width and
background-height properties? If not, will it be in CSS3?". The answer I
received can be found in
news://news.mozilla.org/8pbn4m%244f35%40secnews.netscape.com, but
amounts to "the CSS WG doesn't think this is useful".

The message I linked to on the mozilla news server has a full proposal
on exactly how background-width and background-height should be
specified. According to that message, this specification was posted by
Ian Hickson on this list at some time, but the mailing list search
mechanism on w3.org didn't pull it up.

What the mailing list search did pull up, however, was at least four
separate requests from different people for this exact feature. The most
recent was in March 2001, and the others were in November 2000, November
1999 and one message as far back as August 1997.

To my mind, each of these threads is almost adequate by itself as
justification for the provision of this feature in CSS3; the fact that
four different people (five if you include myself) have independently
requested it over a period of four years should certainly be enough to
counter the assertion that this "isn't useful".

Since I cannot find any argument *against* this functionality anywhere
at all other than the second-hand comment in the message I linked, I
would like to ask what it would take to re-open this issue for possible
inclusion in CSS3. If there are concrete reasons *not* to specify this,
I would at least like to know what they are. If the only reason that it
"isn't useful", I would ask the WG members to reconsider this
evaluation. At least 5 people have thought it useful enough to actually
go out and ask the WG to consider supporting it, and the discussion
thread in n.p.m.style indicates that at least two other people are in
favor of the idea (and one of them is apparently Hixie who certainly is
someone who knows what he's talking about in this area).

Please take the word of web developers in this area and believe us when
we say that the function would be useful to us, rather than deciding for
yourselves that we don't need it.

By the way, if you want potential uses of this feature, see any of the
threads that show up when searching for background-width on the w3.org
mailing list search engine, or the linked thread. If you still aren't
convinced of the fact that there are potential uses, ask me and I'll
provide some more :)

Stuart.

Received on Saturday, 7 July 2001 23:01:47 UTC