Re: [css3-background] fallback color on background-image

On Friday 2009-02-20 15:08 -0800, Brad Kemper wrote:
> Yes, I types that without recalling the syntax correctly, or looking it 
> up. It is completely nonobvious. If it is a fallback for url, it should 
> be grouped with URL more, instead of with bg color. Too bad we can't use 
> commas to specify fallback images, the way we do for font-family. Because 
> then you could just list several different files, starting with an svg 
> perhaps and ending with a color if none of the files loaded or were in an 
> unsupported format. But that would require a different way to do multiple 
> backgrounds, such as with a plus sign or pipe instead of a comma.

I started working on a proposal a few years back for doing multiple
background layers, fallback, and gradients using at-rules:  see the
Gradients and Patterns section of http://dbaron.org/css/css-vg/ .
But I gave up working on it because (1) it became clear I wouldn't be
able to displace the multiple background layers mechanism in the
current draft (which I don't much like, and thus delayed
implementing for quite a while, although I landed support in Gecko
yesterday), (2) we gave up and just shipped SVG support, and (3) I
didn't really have time.

(I think it was probably a mistake for background-* to ever be
separate properties; I think it should be a single property, and the
multiple backgrounds thing just makes that mistake a lot more
complicated.)

(And for the record, I believe both Dave and Ian were present at the
meeting where the working group designed the fallback
background-color mechanism.  I think it was done at the meeting in
October 2004 in Mountain View.)

-David

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

Received on Saturday, 21 February 2009 00:04:56 UTC