RE: [css3-background] box-shadow spread Multiple Choice Question

Brad Kemper:
> You mean, use a transparent border, or add a wrapper element with padding
> and shadow that instead? Yeah, a hack like that would work too, as a
> roundabout way to get a true spread effect (what you call Photoshop-
> esque).
> 
> But why? There is no visual advantage to simulating the spead via scaling. The
> end result does not look like a scaled shadow unless the element is perfectly
> square, because the UA would scale differently for the horizontal than the
> vertical in order to bring the edges out to where they would be if it was an
> outset. It ends up looking like just almost-spread, with distorted curves and
> heavy spots in the corners. They question should really be if this is good
> enough if the UA were to do that as a speed optimization, and not about this
> being the best solution. I just feel it is absurd to say that the most distorted
> version of fake-outset is better looking than the actual outset.

Overall, I haven't expressed an opinion on the listed options (1, 2, 2a, etc.) because I'm still mulling it over.

While it's often a useful spec friction reduction tactic, I generally find "allow UAs to do a lower quality rendering for speed" troubling.  It's a cheat that means we lose testability and interoperability -- and it means the hard-core artists will just do bitmaps anyway because they value their design over UA optimization variations.

With the line of questioning here, I was just trying to get a feel for the author pain with losing box-shadow as discussed in your previous posts (last week/month, whenever it was we had that thread).  If they can get the *identical* desired affect -- regardless of UA-varied optimizations -- by leveraging multiple element workarounds, then at least they don't have to resort to bitmaps so I'm slightly less bothered by the "allow" options.   The availability of workarounds also makes option 5 less painful.

- Brian

Received on Wednesday, 9 June 2010 02:17:25 UTC