RE: overflow: scale & overflow: expand

> From: Ian Brandt [mailto:ian@ianbrandt.com] 

> Would it be practical to allow for overflow to be handled by scaling
> the content, as opposed to just clipping or scrolling it?  Graphics
> and text can both be scaled.  Depending on the content and the
> algorithms used by user agents the scaled result may not end up being
> the best looking thing in the world, but in many cases it may be
> preferable to clipping or scrollbars.

Sounds really wonderful to me. I was thinking something quite similar
but also very different. I'm using XHTML to build application-like
interfaces. I think it would be very useful to be able to explicitly
assign a property like 

textarea{
overflow: expand;
}


This would make a textarea expand to show all it's content without
scrolling, like a table cell would do, with the difference that that
would be the default overflow value for such elements. It's time for CSS
to embrace common form elements which traditionally are so vendor
dependent.


> In the same spirit of the vertical/horizontal proposal for the
> scrolling option, scaling could be specified as vertical, horizontal,
> or both.  Perhaps you could even specify a minimum on scaling, after
> which one of the other techniques for dealing with overflow would take
> over.


Min-scale, max-scale? 


> I think this functionality would see a lot of use for things like
> containing overflowing tables to creating resizable "flash" like
> designs with graphics.

Yes it's time for CSS to help us build even better interfaces without
client dependent means like scripting.

Cheers,

Manos

Received on Thursday, 2 May 2002 03:10:16 UTC