Re: [CSSWG] Minutes and Resolutions 2009-02-04: box-shadow and border-image

Robert O'Callahan wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 10:15 AM, fantasai 
> <fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net <mailto:fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net>> 
> wrote:
> 
>     Is it possible to intelligently draw a complex shadow for this
>     border-image?
>      http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-background/border.png
>      http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-background/borderresult.png
>     Now imagine I said 'space' instead of 'round'.
> 
>     If you and roc are able to find a way to intelligently draw complex shadows
>     for something like that, and are willing to implement it, I'll put it in
>     the spec.
>  
> The real issue here is that using a box-shadow on an element with 
> transparent padding-box is bizarre, whether or not you're using 
> border-images. I don't know why the spec has us clip the padding-box out 
> of the shadow in the first place, since it can only lead to effects that 
> violate real-world physics.

Sometimes you want to violate real-world physics. I have no objection
to adding a 'shadow' property that behaves like opacity and shadows in
all optical accuracy everything that's drawn. But sometimes designers
don't want the shadow to show through. Consider for example, a box with
a semitransparent background, an image, and some text. A real shadow
effect would shadow everything, including the text.

Photoshop offers options to use a mask to "knock out" part of the shadow.
We're merely doing this by default, which, I may be wrong, but I expect
to be useful in a lot of cases, and which allows for the inner shadow
effect.

> If your diamond-border example had a solid padding-box background, and 
> the border-image was modified so the inside of the diamond border is 
> filled with the same background color, then drawing a diamond-shaped 
> drop shadow for the border would be easy and look good.

True. So about that kettle of fish. What should 'inset' do, that would
be both useful and unsurprising? The same thing? Just drop-shadow the
border-image?

~fantasai
who is skeptical that any of this makes sense, but wants to see where
you and Hyatt are going with it

Received on Wednesday, 18 February 2009 02:43:58 UTC