Re: [css3-selectors] :parent selector

I have yet to see any compelling use case for a :parent selector (or  
for many of the other CSS3 selectors for that matter).

dave
(hyatt@apple.com)

On Sep 24, 2006, at 7:41 AM, Mihai Sucan wrote:

>
> Le Sun, 24 Sep 2006 16:25:04 +0300, Matthew Raymond  
> <mattraymond@earthlink.net> a écrit:
>
>>    Let me see if I understand this right. Here's an example from the
>> email you link too:
>>
>> | input[type="radio"] < form:not(input[type="radio"]:checked < form)
>>
>>    Here, "<" is the parent selector, so your :parent pseudo-class is
>> pretty much "< *". If we wanted to use :parent to reproduce the above
>> example, we could to the following:
>>
>> | form > input[type="radio"]:not(:checked):parent
>>
>>    The problem here is that you have to check all of the parent's
>> children to see if they match the part of the selector  
>> before :parent,
>> which strikes me as a serious performance hit.
>
> The given selector is already quite complex.
>
> Allow me to understand how this would work:
>
> The UA searches for all "form" nodes, then goes for all "input"  
> child nodes (not recursively in the tree, only the direct child  
> nodes), then picks all of those input child nodes which are not  
> checked, of type=radio. Having :parent only "asks" the UA to apply  
> the properties to the parent nodes of the picked "input" child  
> nodes. The UA already has the parent nodes (the "form" nodes),  
> since it matched them previously to get to the inputs.
>
> If this is not how things work now (most likely), then how do they  
> work?
>
> If the above is not entirely wrong, then why is it a huge  
> performance hit to apply the properties to the parent instead of  
> the child?
>
>> On top of this, it could be recursive:
>>
>> | element1 > element2 > element3 > element4:parent:parent:parent
>>
>>    In the above, the user agent has to check every child of every
>> element in the chain. If you assume that each element has just two
>> children, then you're checking 2 + 4 + 8 (14) nodes.
>
> Should something recursive be avoided at all costs in CSS?
>
>
> -- 
> http://www.robodesign.ro
> ROBO Design - We bring you the future
>

Received on Sunday, 24 September 2006 21:15:12 UTC