Re: Supports in Media queries

On Dec 19, 2007, at 3:39 AM, Simon Proctor wrote:

>
> Apologies that this is not linked directly to the previous posts, I
> joined the list this morning after coming up with an idea that I
> thought would be useful going forward. Then I searched the list
> archives to find the idea had already been argued over in the
> 'Proposal fro @ua' thread.
>
> In which case I'd like to simplify my argument to an agreement with
> the idea of a 'supports()' value in the @media syntax. Whilst I
> realise this will not cover the possibility of a user agent claiming
> support for a property but not providing full support it would help
> designers cope  with backwards compatibility whilst still making use
> of new standards earlier.
>
> One excellent case in point is the recommendations for Multi Column
> Layout [1] and Grid Positioning [2] by testing for support of the
> 'columns' property you can write code for user agents that support the
> first and by testing for 'columns' and 'grid-columns' you can add
> extra styling for user agents that also support Grid Positioning.
>
> Whilst this will still bring up the issue of different agents support
> different properties differently I think it would be very helpful
> going forward.

Yes it would. Another example would be RGBa and HSBa. For UAs that  
didn't support them you could provide a translucent PNG, but you  
wouldn't want to have both RGBa and translucent PNG mixed together  
for a double effect. It would also be nice to test for HTML elements,  
like "Q", or HTML attributes, like "placeholder". I imagine it would  
be a bear to implement though, and sometimes you would just want to  
know the rendering engine and version, which would be simple to  
implement but not included in a "supports" property.


>
> Thanks for your time.
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-css3-multicol-20051215/
> [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-css3-grid-20070905/
>
> -- 
> Simon Proctor
> Cognoscite aliquid novum cotidie
>
>

Received on Thursday, 20 December 2007 08:30:36 UTC