Re: Proposal for a scrollbar-safe width calculation

Am 25.01.2013 19:45 schrieb Tab Atkins Jr.:
> As far as I can tell, this is equivalent to changing the scrollbar to
> be an "overlay" one that doesn't take up space.  Am I right?

It is somehow the same and somehow the opposite. It serves the same 
purpose, having a consistent width regardless of the presence of a 
scrollbar, but instead of overlapping the content, the space of the 
scrollbar is reserved. Just like overflow:scroll, but instead of showing 
an inactive scrollbar when no scrolling is possible, the element's 
background is shown at this place. If a UA shows scrollbars 16px wide 
this would be equivalent with:

overflow:overlay;
padding-right:16px;

I agree that these are quite similar cases and should probably be 
addressed together, if there is a consent to address one of them. I have 
no feelings about a width-calculation property; I'd be happy with a 
value for overflow, or whatever. And I assume that when implementing 
your proposal of overflow:overlay (or whatever the wording will be), it 
would not cause big extra implementation cost to also implement a 
variant that reduces the element's content by the width of the scrollbar.

<aside>
As some trends from smartphones and tablets tend to get into desktop 
computers, browser vendors might plan to introduce auto-hide overlay 
style scrollbars anyway, which would make both our proposals obsolete.
</aside>

Received on Friday, 25 January 2013 22:51:43 UTC