Re: [css3-regions] Single-region use cases

Hi Alan,

I think this is an interesting use case. Let's work together on an example we could put in the spec. 

Thanks,
-v

On Jan 12, 2012, at 12:04 PM, Alan Stearns wrote:

> While the main use cases for regions are for flowing text from one container
> to another, I believe there will be uses of named flows with single-region
> targets. Redirecting content from a set of elements to a single element
> makes some positioning tasks very easy.
> 
> Consider an alternate style sheet for the CSS WG specifications. What if you
> wanted to show all of the issues at the top - perhaps you're working through
> the list and want to see how many are left, or you want to copy just the
> issue text to paste somewhere else. You should be able to do this with just
> a small amount of CSS without changing the markup:
> 
> .issue {
> -webkit-flow-into: allIssues;
> }
> body::before {
> display: block;
> -webkit-flow-from: allIssues;
> }
> 
> The set of people who might benefit from this particular example might be
> small. But hopefully it illustrates how easily you can rearrange content
> display order with named flows, and how a single-region flow could be
> desirable. The styling above seems much more straightforward to me than some
> of the repositioning schemes I've seen people try. It's a limited kind of
> DOM manipulation (that does not actually change the DOM) you can do in CSS
> without resorting to JavaScript.
> 
> Of course, regions do not quite work this way yet. At the moment if you want
> to use this trick and not overlap content you need to specify a height and
> width on the pseudo-element. If this idea is something we should pursue,
> then width:auto and height:auto need to be able to calculate the correct
> size for a single region that will contain the entire flow. And this use
> case would also benefit from sibling pseudo-elements, if you want to
> position your flow in-between two elements as opposed to at the end or
> beginning of either.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Alan
> 
>

Received on Friday, 27 January 2012 16:48:06 UTC