Re: Proposal: :column pseudo-class

On 7/2/05, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
> On Sat, 2 Jul 2005, Orion Adrian wrote:
> >
> > What is the purpose of CSS? Is it to?
> >
> > 1) Provide presentational elements needed by HTML?
> > 2) Provide layouts for GUIs?
> > 3) Provide styling for GUIs?
> > 4) Style documents?
> > 5) Something else?
> 
> All of the above.
> 
> CSS's primarily goal is to allow people (users and document authors) to
> take semantic markup and present it as they wish. Semantic markup could be
> in the form of anything from simple static documents all the way to fully
> fledged applications, although exactly where the line is drawn is an issue
> that is often hotly debated between CSS working group members.
> 
> (Personally I think CSS should address all styling needs from static
> documents up to applications as complex as Firefox or Thunderbird, whose
> UIs are indeed styled with CSS, but others think that even going as far as
> applying CSS to Google Maps or GMail is too far, and would draw the line
> at or near pages no more interactive than, e.g. the Google search page.)

The page needs updating then. It's pretty clear that CSS is a document
styling language.

Design is tricky. Creeping featurism can take an excellent application
and make it terrible at everything.

It has been said that this will be CSS's fate.

One recent user study of Office users discovered that the one thing
they wanted most of all, was not more features, but for each of the
features to be done better.

Looking at the giant trees in California is said to bring a sense of
awe. Big seems to do that and desires for gradure, especially when
linked to our own fates, can be very tempting. But it's not doing the
general populace any good.

If what you say is true and that CSS is trying to do all those things,
then it is loosing focus. It's like a movie that can't decide if it's
a comedy, a tragedy or a horror film. Some combinations work, but
focus is needed.

I would rather have a UI language and a document language that were
separate. I think in the long term so would most people.

So first and foremost, I think we should decide what CSS should really
be. And then cull the set of features to optimize for that behavior.

Orion Adrian

Received on Sunday, 3 July 2005 02:30:10 UTC