Re: Re[27]: css with attribues [hardware]

On Jan 23, 2008, at 9:35 AM, David Dorward wrote:

> On 22 Jan 2008, at 17:53, Brad Kemper wrote:
>> Unfortunately, there is an undercurrent of opinion on this list  
>> (or perhaps even a theme of the CSSWG) that authors must be  
>> protected from themselves, and that the Web must be protected from  
>> authors. It rears its head time and time again. There is a  
>> surprising lack of the idea of "empowering authors", or "letting  
>> authors be responsible for the consequences of their work", or of  
>> giving designers the creative freedom to do a good or bad job  
>> based on their own skill and craftsmanship.
>
> There has to be a balance - potential benefits vs the cost of  
> implementation.

Agreed. But many of the arguments I've encountered against things  
I've proposed had little to do with implementation costs (which I try  
to consider before I propose something), and more to do with the  
impact of authors using it (such as the favorite, "impact on  
progressive rendering").

There is nothing to prevent an author from specifying a 100MB picture  
as a background, yet few would, because they know that it would slow  
down the page tremendously, and turn away viewers. Yet some sites do  
have higher bandwidth content (YouTube and flickr come to mind), as  
those authors have considered the tradeoffs and decided to try to  
appeal to higher bandwidth users. It was still the author's choice.  
Some choose poorly, and have terrible sites as a result, but I think  
it is wrong for the CSSWG to take on the responsibility of preventing  
poor design choices.

> This particular example seems to have near zero benefits (I don't  
> recall seeing any examples that demonstrate otherwise in the entire  
> thread), but high costs (which I have given examples of).

I admit that what I've posted in this thread about anti-author  
rhetoric is more about the general culture of the list, and less  
about this particular proposal.

Received on Wednesday, 23 January 2008 18:14:19 UTC