Re: [cssom-view] Why is body's offsetParent null ?

On Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:59:01 +0200, Sylvain Galineau  
<sylvaing@microsoft.com> wrote:
> The current spec and user agents I have tested - IE7, FF3b5, Safari 3.1,  
> Opera 9.5b1 -  set body's offsetParent property to null even though a)  
> body has offset properties for which b) there is a reference element -  
> html - with box properties of its own.
>
> My question is : what are the reasons for this beyond compatibility with  
> IE legacy ?

That is actually the primary reason. One of the goals of this  
specification is also to minimize the differences between quirks and  
standards mode, as explained in the recently added background section:

   http://dev.w3.org/csswg/cssom-view/#background

Making the HTML body element "special" helps with that. It doesn't seem  
very bad design either considering that the HTML body element is special  
in CSS and it's special with respect to event handling too.


-- 
Anne van Kesteren
<http://annevankesteren.nl/>
<http://www.opera.com/>

Received on Wednesday, 23 April 2008 08:09:18 UTC