Re: Flexbox Draft, with pictures!

On May 26, 2010, at 1:03 AM, Alex Mogilevsky wrote:

> Although I don't support extending "flex unit" to CSS in general, it seems reasonable that "flex" has a meaning elsewhere, e.g. within a flexible grid. That is probably how the naming got transferred from XUL to begin with.

On May 26, 2010, at 1:33 AM, Alex Mogilevsky wrote:

> We apparently have different view of importance of Flexbox layout having separate model and not interacting much with the rest of CSS. You are trying to integrate it more, and I think it is important not to. It is good to be separate because
> -- it is a building block for a UI platform, and every successful UI platform I've seen is built of very simple and independent building blocks.
> -- by being separate it provides a simple solution for previously complex problems, yet it doesn’t add any additional complexity to the overall model. It is a great role model for further extensions (including some that we will come up with from looking at use cases).

But if the main thing it does is allow flexible units inside, then authors will want to use it everywhere. In fact, I would prefer not to have to do something like this, which seems like it would end up being fairly common (perhaps in a "reset" stylesheet):

* { display: inline-flexbox; }
div, p, blockquote [,...] { display: flexbox; }
table { display: table; }
TR { display: table-row; }
TD { display: table-cell; }
.needs-to-be-block { display: block; }

etc.

On May 26, 2010, at 1:03 AM, Alex Mogilevsky wrote:

> A good name would express the way the container positions its children along one dimention. E.g. "stack".

Or maybe, uh, "flow"?

I refrained from jumping into this conversation much earlier, because in the past I've avoided learning XUL and flexbox, as it seemed pretty complicated. But I could really get behind being able to use flex units and flow direction everywhere.

Received on Wednesday, 26 May 2010 15:03:21 UTC