Absolutely positioned generated content

The specification states that a user agent has to ignore the position 
property on generated content. To me this seems to limit the 
expressivness of CSS 2.1

Since the generated content will be part of the block it is attached to, 
a border will surround the generated content as well as the element 
content. according to the specification.

If it was allowed to use absolute positioning for generated content it 
would also be possible to instead have the border surrounding just the 
element content and not the generated content. This by setting 
position=relative for the element, and position=absolute for the 
generated content so as not to be part of the normal flow but appearing 
as a header for the box.

For example:

name:before {position:absolute; top:-1em;content:"Name:"}
name {position:relative;border:solid}

I would like the code above to be allowed and result in:

Name:
-----------
| Roger   |
-----------

This seems not to be possible if one implements the specification as 
written, which does not seem to be symmetric since there is no problem 
having a border just around the generated content

name:before {border:solid}

Received on Sunday, 9 March 2003 12:20:40 UTC