Re: [CSS21] body { padding: 8px; } HTML40 sample stylesheet

On Friday, July 25, 2003, at 7:49 PM, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

> I think we are discussing sample style sheets in general. And although
> aural properties are practically irrelevant at present, the existing
> sample style sheets are not limited to screen media. There's nothing in
> them that says that they would not apply to print media too, for 
> example;
> in fact they have some specific rules for print media only.

Thank you for you detailed and informative reply. I really agree with 
what you are saying, so I've skipped through a large part of your mail 
just to 2 specific paragraphs.
  You are right, I think that there is a point where it is not worth 
being over specific about how a browser should render  document by 
default . But someone somewhere does have to choose some default value, 
and I can see how a discussion about what that value should be, could 
be helpful.

I did want to find out a bit more about this point:
> Do you really mean user interface, or do you actually mean document
> rendering? They are quite different things. And would the consistency,
> whatever that means in detail, be important to users or to authors?
> For which reasons?

Because I think web pages are both. Some web pages are more document 
like, and some are more user-interface like. But I think that all have 
elements of both.

Watching users who are not so familiar with the web, struggling  to 
understand how to use it and even what hyperlinks are, has made me 
believe quite strongly that some consistency in how web pages work is 
important to users.
I think it is also helpful to authors because it means they are not 
having to reinvent the wheel every time they create a document. They 
help to cover situations that an author has not considered.

.......

>> It makes sense that headings are more prominent than body text and 
>> that
>> there is some consistency in the way that hyperlinks are displayed on
>> they web.
> Surely. But that relates to the general principles, not specific 
> styling,
> and it should be said in HTML specifications.

And surely CSS is the best language that we have for describing what 
those principals should be?


Tom
--
Tom Broxton 07866 435 853
http://www.isness.org/broxtt/

Received on Saturday, 26 July 2003 06:29:15 UTC