Re: Frameset/Frame Specification Amendment (HTML+CSS)

On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 11:59 AM, Brad Kemper <brad.kemper@gmail.com> wrote:
> This should not be a discussion about the merits of frames as a design
> element, or debating the pros and cons of the dogma of the anti-frames
> religion. Even deprecated items can typically receive CSS styling. Frames
> ARE still in use, and COULD be made more compatible with using CSS for their
> current non-CSS presentational aspects  Your distate for their use is no
> reason to try to shut down discussion about their styling.

What's the value in expanding CSS's ability to style frames, though?
We don't want to encourage their use in new pages (and so adding new
abilities to CSS to handle them probably isn't worth the effort), and
don't want to damage legacy pages' use of frames (and so changing any
aspects of how frames work, either to make more sense or to be more
compatible with current CSS concepts, isn't really worthwhile).

We *do* want frames to be specified in an interoperable way so that
browsers can refer to *some* spec for reference, but HTML already does
that itself.  What's the value in us doing so?

>> Again, an HTML issue.  If HTML is dictating presentation, and browsers
>> are paying attention to it, then we can't do anything about it.
>
> Sure we can, even if we don't change the syntax of the HTML. We could simply
> explain the HTML presentation as being due to a UA stylesheet that describes
> that presentation, and allow it to be overridden. That's certainly been done
> before, many times.

Sure, but that supposes that browsers are willing to pay attention to
it.  If they'd rather just do exactly what HTML5 says, then we're
stuck.

~TJ

Received on Friday, 26 March 2010 20:29:57 UTC