CSS3 box-sizing property (resend with smaller patch).

[Allan Sandfeld Jensen]

On Friday 05 November 2004 00:09, Germain Garand wrote:
> Hi Allan,
>
Hi Germain.

I was waiting for your reply. I respect your oppion a lot, and know we have 
different views on standards.

> > Just wanted to get peoples opinion before commiting my next patch that
> > implements the suggested CSS3 property box-sizing.
> > It already exists in MacIE and Opera, and in Mozilla under
> > -moz-box-sizing, but it seems it is only luke-warm for CSS3.
> > It is used for manually telling which box-model the webpage is using. The
> > old WinIE (border-box) or the CSS standard one (content-box).
> >
> > Since there are already webpages out there using it, I suggest
> > implementing it and under the box-sizing property. Another option would
> > be using -khtml-box-sizing, but then it wouldn't work with any existing
> > webpages.
>
> are you aware CSS3 is a working draft, i.e, not even a proposed
> recommendation? I think it is pretty irresponsible to directly expose
> properties defined in there. They are definetly not suggested by the
> working group yet. They very well might be dead by tomorrow, for all I
> know.
>
I cannot see the irresponsible, as I said it predates the recommendation to 
CSS3, and will therefore never be overloaded to mean anything else. By 
supporting it we render the page as the author expects, regardless of whether 
he is using a standard or not.

> In this specific case the blurb on top of section 9 at
> http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-box/, is clearly not comforting the viability of
> this property:
>
> "9. The 'box-width' and 'box-height' properties (or 'box-sizing'?)
> [...]
> The property 'box-sizing' was first proposed to provide an upgrade path for
> certain browsers that interpreted 'width' the wrong way. 'Box-width' and
> 'box-height' are proposed as improved versions of 'box-sizing'. However,
> newer versions of those browsers have already fixed the bug and it is not
> clear that these properties are really needed anymore."
>
Yes, I read that.. Read I many times and then I laughed. I do not know which 
world this commitee lives in, but it aint the real one. It is no longer 
needed because MSIE 6.0 _can_ render according to the standard? I guess they 
have never seen statistics about how common older IE browsers are. The 
box-sizing is a good way to make a page that renders the same in both older 
and newer browsers. Box-width and box-height will never do that, and is just 
a stupid idea.

> > I discovered another odd thing while doing this. It seems that WinIE 6.0
> > and Opera uses the border-box model in quirk mode, while Mozilla and
> > Konqueror always uses the standard. I thought we usually tried to mimick
> > WinIE behavior rather than Netscape, should we add box-sizing to the
> > quirk css, now that it is easy?
>
> MSIE is merely paying for its past mistake about the box model- it had no
> choice but to implement that backward compatible hack.
>
> I add the same dilemma about IE quirky font-sizes and eventually dropped
> the idea when thinking that:
> 1) Gecko is gaining momentum, thus turning IE quirks less and less
> relevants 2) we have "like Gecko" in the UA (mmh...)
> 3) we are even considering dropping document.all
> 4) it just feels wrong to inflicts to our users the same legacy contorsions
> and pains than MSIE inflicts to theirs when they want to write simple, non
> doctyped, html...
>
> Whatever we decide, I think we must get over the IE/Gecko identity crisis,
> because that is doing us no good, and simply aims at the most standard
> compatible quirk mode whenever we have a choice.
>
I do not agree. The reason I have always been using Konqueror and not Mozilla, 
is that Konqueror is pragmatic, more precisely because it can render 
slashdot.org correctly, and Mozilla cannot, and refuses to do so.
Konquerors force have always been that it is better at rendering broken MSIE 
specific pages than Mozilla is. I strongly believe we should continue the 
trend of rendering whatever we recieve the way the author intended. We do not 
have the manpower or userbase of Mozilla, and has to distinguish ourselves in 
differently.

I only see 3 identities we can assume:
1. Try to be like MSIE, only better
2. Try to be like Gecko, but always behind
3. Create a new common identity with Safari, but this requires that we agree 
on some kind of common UA form, and feature-set versions.

`Allan