Re: CSS Regions considered harmful

On 01/28/2014 11:23 AM, Edward O'Connor wrote:
> Hi Håkon,
>
> You wrote:
>
>> My primary point is that we should not abuse HTML tags as this is
>> harmful to web semantics. That's problems #1
>
> Agreed.
>
>> and it should, alone, be enough to stop the [CSS Regions]
>> specification from progressing.
>
> Disagreed. Regions currently relies on dummy elements because the WG has
> not made progress on defining features for explicitly creating boxes in
> CSS. Once we have such features, content can be flowed into them with
> the properties defined in CSS Regions.
>
> Instead of applying stop energy to a spec that defines necessary
> features (how to flow content through boxes of different sizes), we
> should instead prioritize making progress on defining new box creation
> mechanisms so that authors won't have to resort to dummy elements.

If the spec were pared down to defining how to flow content through
boxes of different sizes, maybe some of these objections would go
away. Like CSS Fragmentation, it would not be usable on its own, but
would be relied on by other modules (Named Flows, Overflow Fragments,
Page Templates, Template Slots, etc.) that are attempting to solve
the region-creation problem. Adobe and Microsoft could work on it in
the context of Named Flows, Mozilla and Opera could work on it in the
context of Overflow Fragments, and nobody would object to progressing
"a spec that defines necessary features (how to flow content through
boxes of different sizes)".

~fantasai

Received on Thursday, 30 January 2014 13:41:41 UTC