Re: frustrated with css/box model

> One thing I would like to see that coud be done is add
> client window size to the http header. By doing so, a

Many browsers already do this, or send the screen size (many designers
seem to, wrongly, assume they have the whole screen).  However, this
forces contents negotiation.  Current caching proxies do not support such
arbitrary content negotiation, forcing an end to end transfer each time,
and even if they did, negotiating for window size (much better than
screen size) would pollute them with multiple copies of the same page.

Most web servers can only contents negotiate at this level using their
CGI/ASP/... mechanisms, not the basic, and fast, declarative methods
they use for simple pages.

The other big problem with server side handling is that it does
not work when pages are viewed offline using a different window
size from when they were viewed online.

I believe CSS3 has "media queries" to allow rules to be conditional
on the screen size, in a declarative, client side, manner.

> homes. No gas lights. It's the 21st
> century. I don't have a flying car, but, I should be

HTML was originally a deliberate rebellion against media that only worked
with the latest technology; although new itself, it was designed to
work with almost any computer medium.  People forget, but PDF was around
before the original, text only, HTML browsers.  We also still have speech,
after a million or so years and handwriting, after several 1,000.

Received on Saturday, 18 October 2003 06:47:54 UTC