Re: New layout language.

Orion Adrian wrote:

>>Linking the dimensions to the window borders ensures that the
>>box resizes with the browser window.
>>
>>Similarly, if you want a box from (0,0) to (50,200) you just specify
>>left, top and width, height. If you want a box next to that from (50,0)
>>to (total width, unspecified) then you specify left, top and right.
>>    
>>
>What about the case where you don't want something to grow at the same
>rate as the viewport? This is what I'm talking about in the 0%/100%
>case. What about the other percentages?
>  
>
I replied to that already.

>>By the way, in your example that you gave without right: and bottom:,
>>how can you specify that something ends x pixels before the end of the
>>window? In fact, how can you specify the place where a box ends in
>>anything else but percentages? You can't, so I think that makes your
>>proposal officially less powerful than CSS currently is :).
>>    
>>
>By defining the container it's in. The viewport is defined as well
>(but wasn't listed in the example). An oversight on my part.
>
>The viewport being another region is described as
>
>top: 0;
>left: 0;
>width: <number> + 100%;
>height: <number> + 100%;
>
>And with at addition it's absolute positioning is exactly as powerful,
>and simpler to boot.
>  
>
I do not think your proposal is simple at all. The "+ 100%" stuff, I 
just barely understand it.

>I still haven't seen a mechanism to get around that. Why am I being
>told that I have to pollute my content with all this other stuff
>before I serve it? Why not serve each thing separately and deal with
>it all on the client side.
>
In XHTML you can do that, by creating a ‘master document’ which contains 
a number of divs for layout with role attributes, and src attributes to 
the respective content for each document. It is similar to frames, really.

>Why is there still this silly reliance on user style sheets when
>people don't use them. Power users use them, but they're unlikely to
>be the ones with the problem. Users don't use user style sheets
>(statistically speaking).
>
Nothing prevents user agents from automatically generating those user 
styles based on some UI.

>I know you read the primer. It gives the ability to move layout to the
>device so that content authors don't have to create layouts for every
>type of device. The device can simply take the content and deal with
>how it pleases.
>
And I also think it has been said that there is no market for that. Quoting David:
"Whilst I agree that would be good, thousands of web designers voted
with their table based layouts that they should control layout.
CSS layout features exist because the market (those with the money,
not the consumers) wants to control layout."

But it seems your proposal actually consists out of two parts, which had 
not been clear before (I already missed the relation between the primer 
and the actual proposal):
- positioning: I think can be done easily with the current CSS, although 
perhaps slightly more verbose
- separate sources for different documents (e.g. navigation and 
content): I think XHTML can do this.

I think I can summarize your proposal as follows: you are basically 
talking about the re-introduction of the frameset. Albeit with a 
different syntax.

Why didn’t you say so in the first place?


~Grauw

-- 
Ushiko-san! Kimi wa doushite, Ushiko-san!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Laurens Holst, student, university of Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Website: www.grauw.nl. Backbase employee; www.backbase.com.

Received on Wednesday, 6 July 2005 21:48:25 UTC