Re: CSS WG - Pulling Back the Curtains

On Friday 2008-03-28 09:54 -0700, Garrett Smith wrote:
> It is painfully frustrating to observe and do nothing. They're now
> talking about some silly filters proposal, yet I can't even get:-
> 
> document.defaultView.getComputedStyle(el, '').getPropertyValue('margin')
> 
> To work in any browser.

For what it's worth, if you want issues like this to be addressed,
you'll have much better chances if you raise them in an appropriate
thread.

(In this particular case, it doesn't work because 'margin' is a
shorthand property.  While 'margin' is doable, shorthands aren't
doable in general, and a rule that they all just don't work here has
some advantages.)

> Sadly, the CSSWG is more of a "who's who" group, and if you're not a
> paying member, be prepared for your ideas to be ignored. This is not
> something fixable. It is what you get with such a model.

I think that's a little bit of a mischaracterization.  I think what
you're observing is more the result of an attitude that if you want
a new feature, you need to be willing to do the work to write a
solid spec and test suite for it (which is far from trivial) and
convince browser makers that it is worth implementing, or you need
to convince somebody else that it is important enough to do that
work.

The W3C isn't structured in a way that gives it moral authority over
browser makers (to tell them what to implement).  Anybody can push
their ideas in front of the CSS working group, whether they're doing
it because they believe them to be critical for Web authors or
because they're doing it because they stand to make a profit if
those ideas are adopted.  Given the lack of such moral authority,
the working group tends to spend its time on things that it
perceives as likely to be implemented (since then its work is more
likely to be useful).

(It also seems like you have particular issues in mind, but I'm not
sure which ones.  I'm guessing issues related to the object model.)

-David

-- 
L. David Baron                                 http://dbaron.org/
Mozilla Corporation                       http://www.mozilla.com/

Received on Friday, 28 March 2008 17:43:30 UTC