Re: [css-flexbox] Renaming flex-basis:auto for less confusion

On 07/01/2014 09:01 AM, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
> Minutes link: <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2014Jun/0107.html>
> 
> fantasai and I were to propose a new keyword for the "use
> width/height" behavior, leaving ''auto'' to mean a flex-basis of auto.
> To avoid breaking content, the 'flex: auto' shorthand declaration
> would continue to mean what it does, expanding to 'flex: 1 1
> main-size', and we're relying on the assumption that hardly anybody is
> explicitly specifying the longhand 'flex-basis: auto' and relying on
> it to pull in a non-auto width/height value.
> 
> We suggest ''main-size'' for the new keyword.
[...]
> This is also provisional based on whether there's too much
> "flex-basis:auto" code in the world that's paired with a non-auto
> 'width' value.

Heads-up: I've implemented this "auto" --> "main-size" renaming in
Firefox Nightly[1] builds since Friday, but it appears to break the
sizing of the Google searchbar[2] at the top of various Google
properties (Google search-results pages, gmail, calendar, news, etc).

All of these pages have the following declarations for their searchbar,
via ".gb_rb" selectors:
    width: 650px;
    flex:  0 2 auto
So, this is an instance of "flex-basis:auto" code in the world, paired
with a non-auto "width" value.  (The thing we were worried about when
making this spec-change, quoted above.)

There are other similar styles on the same pages, too -- e.g. the
element with class "gbqff" is styled with:
   width:100%;
   flex: 1 1 auto
...though it doesn't look like that one ends up impacting the actual
page rendering, possibly because the container is sized based on the
child's auto-width, so that "100%" and "auto" end up being equivalent.
Or something like that.

Anyway -- we've contacted Google about this issue and I'm hopeful that
they'll take action reasonably soon (adding a "main-size" version of the
above-quoted "flex" decls).  But this might portend badly for this spec
change being web-compatible.

(Fortunately, I haven't heard of any other content that's been broken by
this change, though it's only been a few days.)

~Daniel
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1032922
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1051511

Received on Monday, 11 August 2014 16:32:59 UTC