Re: proposal for a new css combinator

On Jan 13, 2010, at 7:22 AM, Niels Matthijs wrote:

> >> It's not especially elegant, but gets the job done, I think.
>  
> Indeed, but as you stated already, it’s not very elegant.

Yes, and I am not saying I am apposed to the idea. I am just trying to get a feel for how big the improvement would actually be, and how big the use case is.


> 1/ when you change something to the focus header you have to reset it for whatever components are nested

Right, assuming it is a property that you actually want to be different, and it is not already set to something different. But for inheritable properties, you may have to do that anyway. For instance, if the inner header is supposed to have a different font-family, then you are already creating a separate rule for it, right? Then if you later want to change the outer focus header's font-family (and not others), then you don't have to touch the existing rule for the inner header.

> 2/ when you nest a new component you have to reset all the styles again.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean exactly.

>  But even worse!
>  
> 3/ what if the second heading can’t be reset.

Why can't it be reset?

> Imagine the focus heading has a padding of 1em. The second heading has a padding of 0.5em; Depending on where all of this is placed in your css you have to do a whole lot of rewriting and redefining the same values (for no good reason really).

I'm not following. If you've got two paddings, then you've already got two rules. You would only change the ones that you want different. I must be missing something (in my defense: I've had no coffee yet this morning).

> Imo, this is not really acceptable behaviour.  Probably okay and doable 10 years ago,

Yes, and it seemed in the blog entry that you would prefer IE6, thus my suggested work-around. 

> but if you want to deliver quality work to your clients you should be able to build more robust and flexible solutions, allowing nestings that don’t pick up any unneeded styles (especially handy when building a framework where you don’t even know what will be nested.

Would scoped selectors help with this?

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2010Jan/0262.html

> From: Brad Kemper [mailto:brad.kemper@gmail.com] 
> Sent: 13 January 2010 15:36
> To: Niels Matthijs
> Cc: www-style list
> Subject: Re: proposal for a new css combinator
>  
>  
> On Jan 13, 2010, at 4:02 AM, Niels Matthijs wrote:
> 
> 
> I’m quite sure that someone before me must’ve thought about this, or maybe I just didn’t look closely enough at the latest specs, but I believe we are missing an important css combinator.
>  
> For the full explanation you can check the following article: http://www.onderhond.com/blog/work/missing-css-combinator
>  
> I think in general, you could achieve your aims (including IE6 compatibility) with something like the following, right?
>  
> .focusBlock header { /* stying for first level of header in the focus block */  }
> .focusBlock header header { /* reset any styles you don't want in subsequent header descendants  */  }
>  
> It's not especially elegant, but gets the job done, I think.