RE: [css3-flexbox] intuitivity and width computation rules

> From: Boris Zbarsky [mailto:bzbarsky@MIT.EDU]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2011 5:05 PM
> To: Sylvain Galineau
> Cc: Daniel Glazman; www-style list
> Subject: Re: [css3-flexbox] intuitivity and width computation rules
> 
> On 1/12/11 6:29 PM, Sylvain Galineau wrote:
> >>> Nobody - except the CSS WG itself and I'm not even sure - will ever
> >>> understand why the paragraphs make the first flexing box of the
> >>> second section grow...
> >>
> >> Uh... it's really not that hard.
> >>
> >
> > Hard for whom ?
> >
> > If we can get 10 experienced authors in a room and a majority do, on
> > their own, think of setting the width to 0 to achieve the (non-zero)
> > distributed width shown in the reference image they're asked to
> reproduce then OK.
> 
> That's a very very different bar from "not even someone who has read the
> spec carefully can explain the behavior", which is the bar Daniel was
> saying.

Fair enough. Although, fwiw, I couldn't really explain it until you 
explained it.

> 
> The simplest way to get the behavior Daniel _seems_ to want here is to
> just use percentage widths on the boxes, as far as I can tell.  That's if
> I understood the behavior he wants correctly.  I'd like to verify whether
> that understanding is correct before spending any more time on this
> thread.
> 
> But if the problem we're trying to solve is "I want three boxes of equal
> height whose widths are in the ratio 2:1:1", which is what it sounds like,
> then yes, I would expect 10 experienced web authors to all come up with
> the idea of setting their widths to 50%, 25%, 25% respectively.

If they clearly understand how box-flex applies after width was calculated, 
sure. But then I'm not sure why they'd write this stylesheet.