Re: [css3-flexbox] flex-grow initial value should be 0px

"Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com> writes:

> On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 3:04 PM, Alex Mogilevsky <alexmog@microsoft.com> wrote:
>> I don't think it matters how awesome anonymous items are, or not. It is very easy to style anonymous items, only takes 11 character... like this: "<div></div>".
>
> Agreed, anonymous flex items are a non-issue.  They're handled to keep
> the model sane, not to provide a useful feature.
>
>
> Since no one has strong objections to any of the options, and among
> the implementors in the thread, 2 are for C and 1 is for B (adding in
> editors, it's 3 for C, 1 for B, and 1 neutral between B and C), I
> think we should modify the spec for C.  Morten can weigh in as the
> last implementor, but his choice will either be with the majority, or
> tie the implementors but keep the +editors numbers favoring C.

As an implementor, I have no strong opinions (they are obviously equally
easy to implement), but apart from that, I must say I like things that
are clear and stupid, and at least not smarter than me. :)

So I'm actually mildly in favor of keeping it as it was - option A.

Having an initial flexibility of 1 feels somewhat magical to me. It
could just as well have been 100 or 3.14. With a non-zero initial value,
an author needs to "dumb down" the flexbox manually to get rid of the
default, somewhat arbitrarily chosen, flexibility. Wouldn't it be nicer
to start at the simplest possible level and have the author request
whatever complexity and fanciness that she might want? With option B or
C the spec makes assumptions about what the user might want, instead of
starting off with the bare minimum.

BTW, the inconsistency between having no flexibility on one hand and
cross-axis stretching on the other hand could be solved by letting
"flex-align" have an initial value of "start" (Sorry, I've been on
vacation and haven't yet caught up with the recent spec changes) -
making it even clearer and stupider by default. :)

Since it seems that A is out of the question, I can go for the second
stupidest option - C. I don't like B ("Harder to use alignment and
margins, since have to turn off flex first"). I agree that anonymous
flex items aren't that important, but with option B, an anonymous flex
item would "cancel" the value of what used to be called "flex-pack" (see
previous note about me lagging behind on spec changes) and auto
main-axis margins.

Another issue being discussed in this thread, regarding the case where
only one <number> being supplied in the 'flex' property: I prefer that
it apply to both growing and shrinking, FWIW.

Sorry about using old property names no longer in the spec in this
post. I'll go through the latest version of the spec today or tomorrow.

-- 
---- Morten Stenshorne, developer, Opera Software ASA ----
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Received on Wednesday, 6 June 2012 08:09:18 UTC