Re: Gradients in CSS3?

[ Not quoting original because it was HTML email, which really shouldn't
be posted to this list. ]

I agree that an @-rule is better for things like gradients, mainly
because I don't think it makes sense for different parts of the
description to be able to cascade separately.  In fact, I tend to think
that perhaps it would have been better not to have all the separate
background-* properties that we have today (although perhaps separation
between background-color and everything else).

@-rules would also allow for significantly cleaner syntax for multiple
background layers than the proposal in [1], and potentially for
background fallbacks as well (although I haven't thought of a clean way
to do this).

It's also worth noting that in implementations that support SVG, it's
already (theoretically) possible to use gradients for any color value
using SVG's concept of paint servers [2].  However, I think this would
be significantly easier to use if authors could specify this in CSS
@-rules rather than having to point to separate SVG files.

I actually have a partially written proposal for syntax for some of this
that I showed the CSS working group back in June.  However, it needs a
bit more work.  Given that the issue has come up here, I'll try to
increase the priority of working on it.

-David

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-css3-background-20050216/
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/REC-SVG11-20030114/painting.html#SpecifyingPaint
    http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/REC-SVG11-20030114/pservers.html

-- 
L. David Baron                                <URL: http://dbaron.org/ >
          Technical Lead, Layout & CSS, The Mozilla Foundation