Re: CSS Charter

On Mar 27, 2008, at 5:37 PM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:

>>> 2) It would be unfortunate if using a filter intrinsically  
>>> required inserting presentational SVG markup in your document, or  
>>> alternately loading an additional external resource, for the  
>>> filter specification. At least for simple filters it seems  
>>> desirable to be able to specify them full in CSS without  
>>> reference to additional markup defining the filter.
>>
>> Agreed, but what is a sufficiently simple filter?
>
> I'm not really the best person to fully design the feature. But I  
> think a simple gaussian blur effect is an example of a sufficiently  
> simple filter.

Filters are not as high on my list as gradients, transformations, and  
animation (gradients are highest), but I agree that gaussian blur  
would be a cool, useful effect. I would think being able to use a  
filter usefully with 3 or fewer values attached to it would keep it  
simple.

Some of the filters that IE has would be a good starting place, if  
the syntax could be more standardized. For instance:

alpha:  [not needed if we have hsla/rgba color as part of a gradient]

motion-blur: direction distance; [IE calls it "blur"]

chroma: [useless if you have full png and hsla/rgba support]

drop-shadow: color distance angle blur-distance; [mostly handled by  
box-shadow and text-shadow, but could be useful on images. IE calls  
is "dropshadow", but its is hard-edged]

flip: direction; [IE has flipH and flipV]

glow: color distance spread [this is another really good one]

saturation: percentage [might be useful for mouse overs or something.  
IE calls it "gray", without any further values ]

ink-mode: [difference | multiply | screen | overlay | etc ] [like  
PhotoShop's "blend modes" on layers, paint brushes, etc.... IE has  
"invert" ]

mask: [totally useless and pointless]

smear: color angle [IE calls this "shadow" for some reason]

wave: frequency phase strength light [meh]