Re: CSS Spec Annotations - Design Feedback Wanted

On May 22, 2011, at 1:31 PM, Gérard Talbot wrote:

> 
> Le Sam 21 mai 2011 23:29, timeless a écrit :
>> On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 9:13 AM, Peter Linss <peter.linss@hp.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> or perhaps an "only run untested mode",
>> 
>> definitely
> 
> 
> I agree with and support this "only run untested mode" proposal.

Ok, I'll add it to my todo list.

>> 
>>> if I add that mode I'll have the untested link activate it. I'm open to
>>> suggestions for improvements in the harness UI as well.
>> 
>> my other problem is testing things which have a reference rendering...
>> 
>> e.g.
>> http://test.csswg.org/harness/testcase?s=CSS21_DEV&f=html4&g=144&r=15&o=1
> 
> When I follow this link, I end up at
> 
> http://test.csswg.org/suites/css2.1/nightly-unstable/html4/min-height-applies-to-002.htm

A side effect of the intelligent test sequencing is that when sharing (or revisiting) harness URLs that are index based (the 'r' value in the query string above), you get whatever test happens to be at that index for the engine you're using. You'll get a different test depending on your engine and the current result data, so we're likely not looking at the same test.

The index based URLs are a carry-over from old code (and yes, I know, bad design, violates URL integrity, etc). I'm working on a fix that uses the test names in the URL instead of the index. This way the URLs will always get you to the same test, it's just the *next* test that will be different based on engines and results... (this one's been bugging me for a while, I'm also looking at using mod_rewrite to remove the query entirely.) I was afraid that re-computing test indices would be a performance hit, but it doesn't seem too bad (actually lets me speed up other code to compensate).

>> 
>> there are links to the reference, but they cause my browser to lose
>> its scroll position, so i can't view the top 1/3 of a test, click the
>> reference, check for flash, view the top 1/3, press <space> (shows
>> 2/3), click the test part, press space (shows 2/3), click the
>> reference (shows 2/3), check for flash. possibilities:
>> * being able to view things side by side
>> * abusing transparency to have a view w/
>> -- test above reference
>> -- reference above test
> 
> 
> I understand this scroll position issue wrt reftests and agree that it is
> annoying: it makes the tester click (the scrollbar thumb) and/or scroll
> more.

Understood. In general, tests that require scrolling are in violation of our guidelines [1], so this isn't a problem that's high on my list. The best solution that comes to my mind is using javascript in the harness to swap the tests and references rather than a reload, but a design criteria so far has been to not rely on script in the client. Another fix could be to capture the scroll position and send it to the other page.

[1] http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Test/guidelines.html#the-long