Re: Collapsing elements

On Feb 24, 2008, at 8:34 PM, James Elmore wrote:

> This might be the easiest way to define 'states' for collapsing and  
> expanding elements, but I think I agree with Bert on this one. My  
> mind is working on what the ability to have states for an object  
> might mean, and how I could use CSS to control those states, and it  
> seems to me that there is, almost certainly, more than one state  
> needed. (Actually, more than two states, more than just 'checked'  
> and 'unchecked'). At the very least, there needs to be 'collapsed',  
> 'expanded', and 'none of the above' - which means there is nothing  
> to expand or collapse.
>

As a follow-up, just to be clear, I do not believe CSS should be used  
to create or control the states, only to style them. HTML already has  
a way to create and control a binary state. "Type" is used to create  
a 2-state, click-changeable input ("type=checked" and "type=radio"),  
and "checked" is used to indicate which of the two states it should  
start out as. Without the "type", there is already a "non-of-the- 
above" state.

Even if we don't use the same words, at least we have a good,  
workable model, that would assist in easy understandability of  
similar state changing mechanisms that can be styled with pseudo- 
class selectors.