Posts from Wednesday, April 6th, 2011

CSS Pocket Reference: The Cutting Room

Published 12 years, 11 months past

I just shipped off the last of my drafts for CSS Pocket Reference, 4th Edition to my editor.  In the process of writing the entries, I set up an ad-hoc test suite and made determinations about what to document and what to cut.  That’s what you do with a book, particularly a book that’s meant to fit into a pocket.  My general guide was to cut anything that isn’t supported in any rendering engine, though in a few cases I decided to cut properties that were supported by a lone browser but had no apparent prospects of being supported by anyone else, ever.

For fun, and also to give fans of this or that property a chance to petition for re-inclusion, here are the properties and modules I cut.  Think of it as the blooper reel, which can be taken more than one way.  I’ve organized them by module because it’s easier that way.

After all that, I imagine you’re going to laugh uproariously when I tell what I did include:  paged and aural properties.  I know — I’m kind of poleaxed by my own double standard on that score.  I included them for historical reasons (they’ve long been included) and also because they’re potentially very useful to a more accessible future.  Besides, if we run out of pages, they’re in their own section and so very easy to cut.

I’m pretty sure I listed everything that I explicitly dropped, so if you spot something that I absolutely have to reinstate, here’s your chance to let me know!


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