Re: Scope of :hover

Ernest wrote on Tuesday, June 3, 2003 at 7:06:54 PM:

> I presume that the intention is to provide a mechanism whereby it is
> easy to determine which row and column a cell belongs to. However,
> how does the use of :hover to do this achieve this when the page is
> printed and interactive pseudo-classes such as :hover are not
> available?

It doesn't. Nor does it do so for links or any other type of element.

I think applying *:hover to only certain elements in inconsistent. For
example, why not let authors use :link:hover if that's what they mean?
In this fashion, two behaviors are possible. Saying :hover applies
only to certain elements means that applying it to other elements is
impossible. That sucks, especially now that certain browsers (Mozilla,
Opera, others?) have given CSS authors a taste of what's possible.

I like what Opera 7 did. Since some authors think :hover only applies
to links, probably because that's how Win IE behaves, Opera made it so
the :hover selector applies only to links, while the *:hover selector
applies to everything, and tr:hover applies to tr elements. This is
perhaps sacreligous, but it works well in the real world. Knowledgable
authors can be sure to use *:hover instead of :hover if that's what
they mean, and people who have no idea what they're doing can continue
to use :hover without problems.

It's inconsistent, maybe a little confusing, and I'm sure there's at
least one document it messes up, but for the most part it works. If
CSS is going to say what :hover does and doesn't apply to, I think
behavior similar to Opera's should be considered.

-- 
John Lewis

Received on Tuesday, 3 June 2003 20:41:45 UTC