Re: CSS3: Color

On 2/18/03 6:56 PM, "Andrew Thompson" <lordpixel@mac.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> On Tuesday, Feb 18, 2003, at 21:16 America/New_York, Tantek Çelik wrote:
>>> 
>>> That's it? This is what you're adding color names for? Why, that's
>>> easy to do
>>> even now. Just don't override the user's link colors.
>>> 
>>>> The "if possible" meaning 'in the absence of an elegant and well
>>>> articulated alternative that is likely to be implemented'
>> 
>> Pardon the interruption, but it seems like fantasai and Chris Lilley
>> are
>> talking about two different things.
>> 
>> I *thought* Chris was talking about the _CSS2_system_colors_, for which
>> there is no functionally equivalent alternative.  They're far from
>> perfect,
>> but they still have some utility, have been interoperably implemented
>> by two
>> or more user agents, and have been referenced/used by the SVG
>> specifications.
>> 
>> It's clear that fantasai is talking about the _CSS3_hyperlink_colors_,
>> which
>> *do* have a functionally equivalent alternative as fantasai pointed out
>> (don't override the user's link colors).  They have not been
>> implemented
>> (AFAIK), and have not been referenced/used by any other specifications.
>> 
>> I am still *for* dropping the CSS3 hyperlink colors.
>> 
>> It appears that fantasai is also for dropping them.
>> 
>> Does anyone else have an opinion either way?
> 
> Well, I was going to stay out of it this time, but since you asked...
> Neither current mainstream OS (Win XP or Mac OS X) is in any way
> adequately covered by the system colors. Both use textures, shadows,
> highlights etc in ways the System Colors don't capture. I don't know
> enough about Gnome or KDE to comment on these.

Absolutely.  We even tried to extend the system colors to cover many more
types of user interface elements and states etc. in a previous draft.
However modern user interfaces use far more than just color (or fonts) for
the appearance of OS widgets.  Hence we decided to stick with the short list
from before rather than extending it in a way which was still far from
adequate.


>> Do the original requestors of this functionality still care about it,
>> or was
>> my suggested implementation workaround accepted as an alterative?
>> 
>>  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2002Sep/0061.html
>> 
>> You've got (just under) 10 days to speak up.  If no one objects I am
>> leaning
>> towards dropping the CSS3 hyperlink colors.
> 
> Well, on reading I'd assumed the utility of these keywords is to enable
> me to style some arbitrary element in some way such that it looks more
> like a hyperlink to the user - at least it uses the same colors. eg, I
> suppose I could have an <object> element that behaves similarly to a
> hyperlink when the embedded content is clicked on. I might want to
> style it with in the appropriate colors borders so it looks like a
> hyperlink to the user.
> 
> I took at look at your proposed alternate Tantek, and I'm not sure how
> I'd achieve something like that using your user stylesheet scheme. I'd
> assumed something like that was the use case for this feature.

You've missed the point(s).

The alternate that I provided is for _implementers_ seeking to understand
how to properly reflect user preferences for hyperlink colors via style
rules prepended to the user style sheet.

You're speaking from the perspective of an author.  Authors simply do what
fantasai suggested:

<blockquote 
 cite="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2003Feb/0105.html">
  That's it? This is what you're adding color names for? Why, that's easy
  to do even now. Just don't override the user's link colors.
</blockquote>

And as far as borders go, border-color has the initial value of "the value
of the color property" so there is again no need to set it to anything.
Simply set the 'border-style' to something other than 'none' and the
appropriately colored border should show up.

The "C" in CSS stands for Cascading.  Using a system with a cascade means
sometimes the answer is to *not* do something, to *not* interfere with the
default/user-preferred style rules which are already cascading into place,
rather than *doing* something, and then *doing* something else on top to fix
it up.  Sometimes less code works better than more.  Often in fact.

>AndyT (lordpixel - the cat who walks through walls)

Especially when walking through walls.
 
Tantek

Received on Wednesday, 19 February 2003 01:23:55 UTC