[css3-flexbox] One final round of bikeshedding on property/value names?

I have a few pending issues on Flexbox about the naming of various
properties and property values.  I'll lay them out in short form here,
so we can discuss them all together, like ripping off a band-aid.
(Note that after this, regardless of the result, I'll be rejecting any
name-change suggestions with prejudice.)

The Alignment Properties
=====================
In <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2012Feb/0743.html>,
fantasai proposes renaming all of the alignment properties and some of
their values:

'flex-align' becomes 'content-align'
'flex-item-align' becomes 'box-align'
'flex-line-pack' becomes 'content-pack'
'flex-pack' becomes 'content-justify'

The goal of her renaming is to provide names that are more generic,
and can be applied to other layout modes.

For example, the new names would also apply to Grid:

'grid-row-align' becomes 'box-align'
'grid-column-align' becomes 'box-justify' (this didn't appear in the
Flexbox list, as it has no effect there)
'content-align' and 'content-justify' can offer functionality similar
to 'vertical-align' on a table-cell.
'content-pack' has no effect on a Grid.

These properties could usefully apply to other layout modes, too.
fantasai gives several examples of useful behavior that the properties
could have in Box, and even Table can potentially benefit from the
'content-pack' property.

(She also slightly changes the names of some of the values.  That's
not a significant aspect of her proposal, though, so I omitted them
for brevity here.)

I'm okay with these changes.  I was initially skeptical that anyone
could come up with a good set of properties that did everything
Flexbox needed while also working for Grid and other layout modes, but
I think fantasai succeeded.


The Display Value
===============

Fantasai and Anton don't like the term "flexbox", as they think it's
misleading, since it's really the children that are flexible - the
container element is just a container and is not flexible in and of
itself normally.  They don't have a good suggestion for an alternate
name, though.

Ojan recommends shortening the name further to just "flex", to match
the prefix that all the spec's properties have.

~TJ

Received on Monday, 16 April 2012 23:34:42 UTC