Re: Transforms on inline elements

On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 10:36 PM, Ambrose LI <ambrose.li@gmail.com> wrote:
> But then what exactly is the point of 2D transforms? In the context of
> page layout, I have always thought that 2D transforms primarily serve
> two purposes: (1) to allow fake italics, and (2) to allow glyphs to be
> rotated 180° (many IPA letters were obviously originally created this
> way). If transforms are only applied to block level elements, however,
> then I’m not seeing an obvious use. I must be missing something
> obvious?

Interesting.  Those are actually two very minor, almost accidental
use-cases.  The primary use of transforms is intended to be
transforming block elements, such as rotating an element slightly for
visual effect (this is seen regularly in visual advertising, for
example), or slightly growing an element on hover as a visual
indicator of attention.


On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 11:01 PM, Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi@gmx.net> wrote:
> I do not know about that, but personally I am eagerly awaiting CSS'
> arrival in the 1980s with support for rotated text in table headers
> (looking at current implementations I should add that that shouldn't
> make the text illegible...)

Transforms won't actually work for this use-case, as they don't affect
layout.  Like jdaggett said, what you want instead are the explicit
text-rotation-relation properties in Writing Modes, which can be used
to, for example, make vertical English.

~TJ

Received on Tuesday, 16 November 2010 18:11:53 UTC