Re: [[css3-layout]] Redundancy with table model in CSS 2?

Hi, thanks for the excellent work on the Working Draft. It's very exciting.

I have a few questions, and a proposal (which I offer in the interests
of discussion), all of which are available in more detail at:
http://eco101.wordpress.com/2008/11/28/css3-advanced-layout-module-templates/

1. How difficult will this be to parse, and can multiple rows be parsed
from a single line of css? ie. does display: "aa" "bc"; work? If so, how
do the last row height and the first column height interact, especially
if not all column widths are defined?
2. What happens when two rows have a different number of columns? What
happens when there are odd-shaped cells (ie. L-shaped, etc)?
3. Why display: and not a new property? An HTML table cell can be hidden
with display:none, why make them mutually exclusive with CSS layouts?

Two problems that my proposal also deals with are:
1. Allowing sub-child elements to be part of the layout (as far as I can
tell, layouts cells are restricted to immediate child elements, is that
right?)
2. Allowing easier modification of the layout server-side and with DOM
modification with javascript (removing and extending elements, etc).
It does this by naming the layout and the cell elements with the same
name, and allowing the cell elements to define their grid references
(top left cell and row/colspan). This means that:
- there can be no odd-shaped elements
- overlapping and in intrusion can work
- sub-child elements can be used in the layout
- very easy DOM modification
- no new coding style (ASCII art) to learn
and
> two fundamental limitations: the number of rows and columns depends
> on the mark-up if you use tables, but is fixed if you use a template;
> and the order of the elements can be changed if you use templates,
> but is fixed by the mark-up if you use tables.
- number of rows/cols is not dependant on the parent element, AND order
of elements in document is irrelevant

Also, the markup uses a nested property, similar to background and
background-color and -image properties.
http://eco101.wordpress.com/2008/11/28/css3-advanced-layout-module-templates/#definition

just a thought :)

Also, I'm happy to supply some graphics, if needed. I can whip some up
for the existing ASCII diagrams pretty quick, should I send them to Bert
or somewhere else?

cheers
naught101

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Received on Sunday, 30 November 2008 07:39:22 UTC