RE: [becss] "Behavioral Extensions to CSS" no longer an appropriate name

On Mon, 22 Oct 2007, Chris Wilson wrote:
> 
> If this spec is called "Behavioral Extensions to CSS," it begs the 
> questions of "what's the relationship of this and Microsoft's behaviors, 
> heavily used and supported in 80% of the web browsers currently in use?  

It supplants them.


> Why isn't this just the 'behavior' property that Microsoft implemented 
> nearly a decade ago, since it seems to do the same thing?"

Because it is instead the 'binding' property that Mozilla implemented 
nearly a decade ago, which also seems to do the same thing, but happens to 
have a few advantages (e.g. its vendor wrote a more detailed spec).


> The original document was far more than just a first WG - Microsoft 
> implemented a feature called CSS Behaviors, and it's in fairly heavy use 
> today (for VML, SMIL applied to HTML, and a bunch of custom controls as 
> well).

I don't think we really should count features that are used by the UA 
itself to implement other features as "heavy use". VML and SMIL themselves 
aren't in heavy use either. (They're used, sure, but according to my 
detailed studies they're not widely used. Some features, e.g. <t:video>, 
are used literally on less than a hundred sites total.)


> I'm just saying "behavior" is a loaded word, and we should either be 
> making this CSS feature either really inherit spiritually from the 
> previous one

It does. BECSS and HTCs (Microsoft's behaviours) and Action Sheets (also 
in the original BECSS draft) inspired Mozilla's XBL, which was the base 
for sXBL, which is where XBL2 came from, which is what the new BECSS draft 
is primarily based around today.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Monday, 22 October 2007 23:17:00 UTC