Re: New layout language.

Orion Wrote:

>I stand corrected.
>
>Here's the code to do it the other way (in the new system):
>
>It took 3 minutes. It can be automated easily by a WYSIWYG editor
>since the code for a layout is obvious (it's deterministic).
>
>The time savings alone should make it worth it. But again I stand
>corrected. It was due to the complexity of the CSS code I guess that
>made me think it wasn't possible.

Well as I stated before, your system is really not much different, you've
just shorthanded some stuff.  And I'll also point out that your 3 minutes
and my 45 are vastly different since mine had to be tested first.
Additionally if I had to set up something like this again it would take me
MUCH less time since I wasn't initially sure of how to go about certain
portions of it.  But as a general rule, the only required fields to make
the css do what you wanted were the position:absolute; and then a
top,left,bottom,right placement, or in some instances 3 of those with a
width statement.  You've short-handed min-width/height statements into your
system, so that's really no different than css either.

I'd also like to point out something I think you've missed thus far.  (This
is friendly crits, not trying to be a pain)  Your middle two columns needed
a 10 px margin between them.  You've provided no mechanism in your own
system to handle such a thing thus far.  I've looked through your code a
couple times now and still come up empty handed there.  It's exactly this
sort of a scenario that explains why the W3C box model (while a little
odder at first) is superior to the MS box model.  Your initial supposition
was that you wouldn't need margins at all since you're manually placing
each object exactly where you want, but that isn't the case when you're
using percentages.  This isn't the only area you'd need the margins either.
Between the middle two columns and the bottom footer area you'd have the
same problem.

Again, I'll mention that your system would not degrade nicely after a
certain resize point either.  You'd suffer the same fate as my css version.
I've at least proposed a fix for that:

min-margin:

which is a short hand for:

min-margin-top:
min-margin-left:
min-margin-bottom:
min-margin-right:

And is something I seriously intend on proposing here shortly as it would
totally fix the problem in question.  (Unless someone can show me how CSS
already does this.

In addition to this particular short-coming, the only thing our
conversation has produced thus far is an inkling that CSS might benefit
from a more robust short-hand system.  But even that's questionable as I
myself really don't like using short-hand at all in css as it can be
confusing to beginners and advanced developers alike.

Finally, I'll point out that there's really not much of a difference
between what you wrote and what I wrote.  A single days worth of coding
could probably create the application needed to change anything you wrote
in your syntax into real css syntax.  The problem here of course is that
anything you developed thus would only work in Firefox, and now we're back
to the whole point about MS not implementing squat for the last 4 years
which I think is a played out conversation.

Suffice it to say that even if your language were implemented, it's not
really any simpler than css is currently, and you'd still suffer from MS
not implementing it, so how is it truly any different?

Kris

Received on Wednesday, 6 July 2005 13:24:36 UTC