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From: Mason C on 24 Dec 2009 15:37
On Thu, 24 Dec 2009 12:25:54 -0800 (PST), GTalbot <newsgroup(a)gtalbot.org> wrote:

Thanks for your suggestions.

I'm now intending to use a good, professional 3-column template rather than invent my own.

As to background etc., I didn't intend to trigger comment on that or on anything but
the technique of three columns. I'll fix the design after I get the layout.

masonc
From: Jukka K. Korpela on 24 Dec 2009 18:11
GTalbot wrote:

> Many CSS properties are inherited and inheritable.

Many properties are by definition "inherited", but this does not mean what
most people think it means. "Inheritable" is not a technical CSS term. All
properties are "inheritable" in the sense that you can use the word inherit
as the property value, but this is rather useless, as important browsers
don't support that at all.

> Text-align is one.
> So, you don't have to repeat over and over, again and again text-align
> in every single HTML elements.

If you want to set text alignment for an element, set it. Inheritance does
not guarantee anything.

On the other hand, if you like, you can set e.g.
* { text-align: left; }
Your setting might still be overridden by other style sheets, but that's a
different issue.

> Note that text-align: center makes legibility and reading harder, not
> easier, as the reader can not anticipate where the start of the line
> will be. Usability/speed reading studies with high-speed cameras have
> proven this. So, text-align: center should be avoided, except maybe
> for big heading like <h1>.

There's nothing particularly wrong with centering other headings as well, or
table header cells, or image captions, or...

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

From: GTalbot on 24 Dec 2009 19:32
On 24 déc, 18:11, "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorp...(a)cs.tut.fi> wrote:
> GTalbot wrote:
> > Many CSS properties are inherited and inheritable.
>
> Many properties are by definition "inherited", but this does not mean what
> most people think it means. "Inheritable" is not a technical CSS term. All
> properties are "inheritable" in the sense that you can use the word inherit
> as the property value

Hello Jukka,

Yes, inheritable in the sense that their value can be made to inherit
from their parent; when the property has the inherit keyword value as
a possible value, in the set of possible values. Position, left, top,
margin are some properties where inherit keyword value works in recent
browsers. Opera 10.x, for example, fails when testing left: inherit
http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/Opera10Bugs/inherited-left-top-position.html
but IE 8 succeeds on that one.

> , but this is rather useless, as important browsers
> don't support that at all.

Well, this is changing. inherit as a keyword value is more and better
supported now in latest Firefox, latest Opera, Safari, Konqueror.
Otherwise, I'd be happy to create and submit a test (or many) to the
CSS 2.1 test suite...

IE 8 fails in a number of tests:

border-width: inherit;
http://www.hixie.ch/tests/adhoc/css/border/width/001.html

border-color: inherit;
http://www.hixie.ch/tests/adhoc/css/inheritance/border-color/001.html

font and inherit keyword value


> > Text-align is one.
> > So, you don't have to repeat over and over, again and again text-align
> > in every single HTML elements.
>
> If you want to set text alignment for an element, set it. Inheritance does
> not guarantee anything.

Can you elaborate on this? Because I already submitted 7 dedicated
tests on text-align inheritance and table-cells:

http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/css21testsuite/text-align-002.html

all up to

text-align-008.html

season's greetings, Gérard
--
Internet Explorer 7 bugs: 185 bugs so far
http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/
Internet Explorer 8 bugs: 58 bugs so far
http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE8Bugs/
From: Jukka K. Korpela on 25 Dec 2009 14:15
GTalbot wrote:

>> If you want to set text alignment for an element, set it. Inheritance
>> does
>> not guarantee anything.
>
> Can you elaborate on this? Because I already submitted 7 dedicated
> tests on text-align inheritance and table-cells:

I wasn't referring to browser bugs in inheritance, as you seem to have
implied. Instead, I referred to the inherent feature of inheritance that the
implicit inheritance is, by definition and in browser practice, subordinate
to _all_ explicit CSS settings.

People so often set, say, color property for an element, assuming the
background will be inherited. They typically miss the point even when
explicitly reminded of the fact that if they don't set background, then
_any_ setting for it, even a setting with the lowest possible priority in
the most humble of all stylesheets being applied will take effect,
preventing any inheritance.

It's not very probable that a browser or user style sheet sets text-align.
But why take the risk when you can set it explicitly in your stylesheet?
Assuming you want to set text-align in the first place.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

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