Re: Shadows vs. layout

Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 4:22 PM, Andrew
> Fedoniouk<news@terrainformatica.com> wrote:
>> Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
>>> To be fair, on the GUI systems you know about, the elements are
>>> purposely placed so that the shadow doesn't try to 'spill out' of the
>>> container.  So the question of overflow behavior doesn't come up.
>> Window rectangle does not include shadow/outline.
>>
>> At least on Windows it is a bit challenging to get outline rectangle
>> of the window that includes shadow. So pardon me but I am not buying
>> "purposely placed so that the...". Haven't seen such purposeful attempts.
> 
> I'm talking about within a window - windows themselves live on the
> desktop, which is overflow:hidden.  ^_^

It is *usually* overflow:hidden but sometimes it could be scrollable.
E.g. virtual desktops on notebooks.

And yet any window can be a child of some other window. You easily
can place any top level window inside some other scrollable container 
(window).

That part of discussion is really out of scope. Just trust me that
any window can be as a child of desktop window as a child of some
other window. Usually is a matter of single system function call.

> 
>> The only case when the shadow is just such a background - is a part of
>> window (read: DOM element) background itself as here
>> http://www.terrainformatica.com/htmlayout/images/tooltip-balloon.jpg for
>> example.
> 
> Hmm, HTMLayout lets elements jump out of the application's window?
> That's... weird.

Jumps as in any other UA. tooltips (titles) and drop lists of <select>s 
for example. Why do you think they are not weird?

It is a matter of declaring something like
select:active > popup { position:popup; display:block; }

Usually it not so straightforward but principle is like that.
Why tooltips or say popup menus should be anyhow different from other
DOM elements? Styleable, manageable by scripts, etc. Quite useful and 
popular feature if you would ask people who use them now.

Everything here
http://www.softpedia.com/screenshots/Norton-Internet-Security_2.png
including that popup window is pure markup + CSS + behaviors.
(CSS++ I would say but still).

> 
>>> In the web environment the issue is a bit different - it's easy to
>>> make elements with shadows/outlines/border-images that have parts of
>>> the visual effect spilling out.
>> Yes. As in any other GUI system including various WMs.
> 
> I don't dispute that it can happen.  I'm just saying that in my
> experience, OS GUI elements are either overflow:hidden, or their
> children are prevented from having shadow spill out (this may because
> the shadow is counted as part of their geometry).
> 
> I generally agree with you here, Andrew.  ^_^
> 
> ~TJ
> 


-- 
Andrew Fedoniouk.

http://terrainformatica.com

Received on Monday, 3 August 2009 22:09:51 UTC