Re: Will behaviors be added to CSS?

Boris Zbarsky writes:
> Bert Bos wrote:
> > It is clear that we need to control what happens on link
> > traversal: replace the current document, expand in place, pop-up a
> > temporary window, open a tab in the background...
> 
> To me, it is clear that page authors should not be able to control 
> whether a page comes up in a window or a tab.
> 
> For historical reasons, I have no choice but to cede page authors some 
> control over whether on a link click the new page replaces the old one 
> or is opened in a new viewing area, and this distinction makes some 
> sense.  But specifying what sort of new viewing area the page wants is 
> not acceptable to me as a user and is fragile from a general perspective 
> (what happens when someone devises a new method of creating a new 
> viewing area?  Are we going to change the spec some more?).
> 
> I suspect and hope that this sentence was just an example of what is 
> being considered and not necessarily representative of the actual 
> direction the specification would take....

Actually, I agree. I don't want the author of a document to have any
influence over the layout of my desktop, only over the look of a
document inside one single window. My desktop has exactly the number
of windows I want, no more, no less. But telling browser makers to
remove the possibility to open windows is not going to have much
effect. (Although, luckily, many browsers now allow automatic pop-ups
to be suppressed, but that is only a partial solution.)

However, by putting the function in CSS, we can restore some balance
between the author and the reader. The author will be able to say that
a window should open in front of the current window and that will work
even if the reader has Javascript turned off, since he can say it in
CSS. But at the same time, the reader can specify in his user style
sheet that no new windows should be opened, but only new tabs, e.g.

It is true that windows and tabs are specific to a certain type of
interface. In a tiled interface or in full-screen mode they don't
exist. I'd like to restrict the possible behaviors to just three:
expand-in-place, replace-current-document and pop-up, where the pop-up
is not a full window, but a dialog box, that will disappear again when
you click in it or in the original window. Most environments can
manage one pop-up or overlay and users understand what it is.

So how do I get what I want (and you what you want)? We could try
convincing everybody that they want the same thing, but if that fails?



Bert
-- 
  Bert Bos                                ( W 3 C ) http://www.w3.org/
  http://www.w3.org/people/bos/                              W3C/ERCIM
  bert@w3.org                             2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
  +33 (0)4 92 38 76 92            06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Thursday, 24 July 2003 15:39:58 UTC