Re: Colour gradient backgrounds.

Max Romantschuk :
> Robin Berjon wrote:
> > Andrew Fedoniouk wrote:
> > 
> >> background-color:
> >> gradient(colorTopLeft,colorTopRight,colorBottomLeft,colorBottomRight)
> > 
> > That's still not very generic. A good way to do that would be to simply 
> > use SVG. It'll do the job very well.
>
> I agree. Introducing this into CSS would create unnecessary 
> redundancies. CSS should allow for styling, but actual graphical 
> elements (like a non-solid colored background) is best kept in images.
>
> It's a shame that SVG support is still rather poor, but I don't believe 
> CSS is a sensible place to put gradients.

It depends on the gradient in question.  Simple linear and rectangular
gradients are a common styling feature and don't require a lot to
implement compared to even just SVG Print Tiny which is about as
minimal as one can get with SVG.  Complex gradient patterns are
beyond the scope of CSS, but simple ones are beyond the ability
of SVG Tiny (<lineargradient> is in SVG Basic but not in SVG Tiny.)

However, I don't like the idea of piggybacking onto 'background-color'.
It will not be desirable to make gradients something generic to <color>.
if gradients are introduced in CSS, they should be done with a new
property (or properties) rather than complicating the definition of an
existing property.

Indeed, in hopes of keeping things simple it might even be wise to
only have CSS support linear gradients in the horizontal or vertical
directions, as that would cut the number of calculations that would
need to be made from O(n^2) to O(n).

'background-gradient'
Value: [ bt | lr | rl | tb ] <color> <color>?

The first part would describe the direction of the gradient and if the
second color was not also given, the color specified by the
'background-color' property would be used.

'border-gradient'
Value: <color> <color>?
This would be a gradient from the margin edge of the border to the
padding edge of the border.  Again, if the second color were not
specified, the 'background-color' property would be used.

The lack of obvious starting and stopping points makes
'font-gradient' something I don't think we would want to consider
and I can't think of anything else at the moment for which
a gradient would be appropriate.

Received on Monday, 10 May 2004 16:56:11 UTC