Re: Rendering order without positioning

>>there's a simple solution to my problems
>
>What you have proposed - and similar ideas for enhancements to CSS 
>Positioning mentioned on this mailing list for a long time, including my 
>own pet grid positioning idea - are *not* simple solutions.
>
>They would require heavy rewriting of UAs' existing layout code, with high 
>potential fall-out for pages authored to current standards. Without string 
>vendor support for some particular approach this just isn't going to 
>happen. It has taken years to get browsers to a position where CSS 2 mostly 
>works most of the time; even if we all agreed on a good solution now it 
>would take many, many years before some notional 'CSS 4 Positioning' would 
>actually be usable.
>
>Absolute positioning is indeed not ideal for all kinds of layouts authors 
>want to come up with, but when layout really is important there are 
>workarounds that experienced authors know and understand and that will 
>probably do for now. Any proposed replacement must be not just better than 
>absolute positioning, but an order of magnitude better, before anyone can 
>even consider it.
>
>That's my analysis, anyway. I do not speak for W3C.

Reworking CSS3 is where I think we should start. It's like we're trying to 
sculpt a masterpiece, but we can only add to the starting point, not take 
away. Well we've overshot the masterpeice and I think it's high-time we 
re-evaluate many of the W3C standards with respect to each other. I've been 
working on such a re-evaluation for the last few days and plan to release it 
when I can.

It seems like all the peices are there, they just need to be put together in 
such a way that makes it all usable. I'm making progress.

On a side note, nothing frustrates me more than the idea that a design can't 
be rethought because of momentum. With every new version of the spec we get 
closer and closer to CSS's death. Revision is critical to preventing this. 
Otherwise someone is going to create new, better, _alternate_ specs and that 
will spell the end to CSS and possibly HTML.

Orion Adrian

Received on Tuesday, 25 May 2004 10:47:53 UTC