Re: Printing and background colors/images

On 2/23/11 4:26 AM, Jon Rimmer wrote:
>>> So, right now, browsers are not conforming to CSS 2.1 by ignoring
>>> background properties when printing. Requiring backgrounds to be
>>> duplicated in a print stylesheet, or adding a new property that
>>> applies only to print media would essentially standardise this
>>> non-conformity as part of CSS 3. This seems wrong.

Actually, browsers are more or less conforming to CSS 2.1 here as far as 
I can see.  They just have preferences that act like a user rule along 
the lines of

@media print {
   * { background: none ! important; }
}

and some variations for printing background colors but not background 
images, all of which is perfectly per the spec.

Now the thing is that these preferences don't _quite_ act like the 
above, in that they affect the used value but not the computed value of 
background.  But that could be fixed, if really desired.  It wouldn't 
change the user-observed or author-observed behavior as far as I can tell.

> So long as the proposal is to add the new property to 2.1, then it will.
> I was concerned the idea was to have this property in some new CSS 3
> spec, in which case 2.1 would still be wrong.

I would certainly assume that any additions here are NOT going into 2.1.

> A key principal of software engineering is that you should always try to
> fix errors in the component or layer where they occur, rather than
> trying to work around them at a higher level. I think the same principal
> applies here: the problem is that the spec says backgrounds apply to
> print media, and it should be resolved by reorganising the media types,
> or by introducing some general method to make them more flexible, not by
> adding an ad-hoc, media type specific property or behaviour.

Well...  Backgrounds _can_ apply to print media in browsers right now. 
The user just has to check the appropriate checkboxes.

-Boris

Received on Wednesday, 23 February 2011 13:06:27 UTC