[css3-flexbox] New WD "CSS Flexible Box Layout"

The CSS WG published the first of a new series of working drafts, called
"CSS Flexible Box Layout Module Level 3":

    http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-css3-flexbox-20090723/

It proposes the new values 'box' and 'inline-box' for the 'display'
property. Both of these cause an element to lay out its children in a
single row or column. Other properties then determine the order of the
children (bottom to top, left to right, etc.) and how space is
distributed in and between the children.

The module basically translates the XML-based syntax from XUL (Mozilla's
UIDL) into CSS and is thus specifically meant to lay out parts of GUIs.

The module should be compared with the Grid Positioning[1] and Template
Layout[2] modules. Although those are primarily for typography rather
than GUI layout, they overlap with Flexible Box Layout. Possibly a
single, generalized model can be made, combining the unique features of
each: source order independence, positioned floats, flexible
inter-element spaces, grid-dependent length units, etc.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-css3-grid-20070905
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-css3-layout-20090402

Comments on the module are welcome. Please, send them to this mailing
list, <www-style@w3.org>, with a subject line that starts with
[css3-flexbox], like the subject line of this message.



For the CSS WG,
Bert
-- 
  Bert Bos                                ( W 3 C ) http://www.w3.org/
  http://www.w3.org/people/bos                               W3C/ERCIM
  bert@w3.org                             2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
  +33 (0)4 92 38 76 92            06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Thursday, 23 July 2009 22:32:03 UTC