RE: [css3-flexbox] Too many flex-flow values?

Good question. Technically you are right, any style that uses "horizontal" or "vertical" can have an override in style sheets for different writing modes, and it should be extremely rare -- I haven't seen many designs that easily transform with direction change.

However... the only thing this change would simplify is the chapter you are writing. It won't be more intuitive to say "row" or "column" for designs that are not tolerant to 90 degree rotation (vast majority of them), it will be a hassle for designs that are (think about a combo box control), and it makes no measurable difference for implementation complexity.

I guess it would be worth revisiting the set of options if some looked useless, but I don't think it is the case.

Alex 

-----Original Message-----
From: www-style-request@w3.org [mailto:www-style-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Tab Atkins Jr.
Sent: Wednesday, September 07, 2011 6:42 PM
To: www-style list
Subject: [css3-flexbox] Too many flex-flow values?

Every time I look at the 'flex-flow' property, I get a headache.  I think there are too many options there.  You can specify the flow directions purely logically, purely physically, or an interesting mixture of the two.

I've already logged an issue in the spec about dropping the mixed physical/logical options, so we have only the all-logical and all-physical ones.  That would significantly simplify the syntax without, I think, actually killing any useful options.

Can we go further?  Grid Layout doesn't care about your pitiful physical direction - the orientation and direction of rows and columns are *always* tied directly to logical directions.  'flex-flow' would be *so* much nicer if we could do the same:

flex-flow: [ row | row-reverse | column | column-reverse ]
           [ wrap | wrap-reverse ]?

*Are* there any significant use-cases that aren't addressed by this?
If so, why aren't these problems with Grid Layout as well?

~TJ

Received on Thursday, 8 September 2011 02:27:17 UTC