Re: specificity, user style sheets and SVG

"user testing before standards are released" thread moved to w3c  
process: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/process-issues/

thanks Boris

regards

Jonathan Chetwynd



On 9 Feb 2007, at 21:17, Boris Zbarsky wrote:


This is going to be my last post in this thread, for what it's  
worth.  I don't think it's going anywhere, and I think facts are  
being misrepresented to make vague philosophical points more  
compelling than they really are.

Jonathan Chetwynd wrote:
> Well it did work in Safari Webkit :-) but I was saving that....

Because it would detract from your contention that there is a problem  
with user stylesheets per se?  ;)

> I'm really more concerned with user testing before standards are  
> released.

This is probably the wrong forum for that; you should be contacting  
the folks who set up the W3C process.

> perhaps you can point me to some user testing that backed the  
> decisions arrived at?

The only decisions arrived at pertinent to this discussion that I can  
see were:

1)  There should be user stylesheets
2)  It should be possible for user stylesheets to override author style
     sheets.

Note that nowhere is there anything preventing UAs from coming up  
with other mechanisms to override author style sheets, nor from  
submitting such mechanisms for standardization if necessary.

> User style sheets never really caught on, but why is that?

In my opinion, a number of reasons:

1)  Writing style sheets is hard.  Doing it if you don't know what
     you'll be styling is _really_ hard; see item 4.
2)  A number of UAs have no user stylesheet support.
3)  A number of UAs have very non-discoverable user stylesheet support.
4)  Very few UAs offer the ability to have per-site user style sheets
     (whatever per-site means, and so forth).

So for the average user it's hard to find out how to go about setting  
up a user stylesheet in their UA, if it's possible at all.  If they  
get over that hurdle, it's hard to create a stylesheet that does what  
they want.

-Boris

Received on Sunday, 11 February 2007 14:44:30 UTC