[css3-flexbox] [css3-grid-layout] Too Many Alignment Properties

So far we have 'vertical-align' and 'text-align', which mainly have to do with
text, but the new layout models are starting to introduce a lot more aligns.
Flexbox has four different alignment properties. IIRC Grid introduces several
more that do roughly the same thing but not quite. And there are use cases for
alignment in general block layout -- there's been drafts for alignment properties
in both dimensions there (that need homes, but that's a separate issue).

Rather than having every layout system design and implement its own set of
alignment properties, I'd like us to take a good look and see if we can boil
these down to a single set of properties that we can all share.

There are basically two concepts of what alignment applies to:
   a) the thing itself
   b) the thing's contents

And then there are the two axes: main axis vs. cross axis; inline axis vs. block;
rows vs. columns; etc.

There's the problem of needing four appropriately generic and appropriately
precise names, but I think we should be able to get away with four properties
in CSS total. Values that don't apply in a particular layout mode can be defined
to fall back to something sensible. I think that's better than having more and
more properties that do roughly the same thing but take effect or not depending
on the layout mode.

~fantasai

Received on Wednesday, 1 February 2012 10:26:04 UTC