Comments on: CSS Pocket Reference: The Cutting Room

By: Eric Meyer

Eric Meyer — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 03:06:15 +0000

Sounds like a great book, Dr. Neill! Let us know how your search goes.

By: F. Vance Neill, Ph.D.

F. Vance Neill, Ph.D. — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 20:40:46 +0000

My question is not which parts of an incomplete specification, CSS3, you will include, but whether you will fully document CSS2.1 as it has been ratified as a W3C Recommendation as of June 7, 2011.

Right now, I am searching for a book that accurately reflects the final version of the CSS2.1 specification rather than yet another book on the incomplete CSS3 specification.

By: Thomas Scholz

Thomas Scholz — Tue, 10 May 2011 21:27:47 +0000

The nav-* properties are supported by Opera. I’m not as pessimistic as you about their future in other browsers. They are quite useful sometimes if you have to work with float and position.

By: Jeffery

Jeffery — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 04:50:04 +0000

the 4th edition will release when ???

By: Chris Hester

Chris Hester — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 20:35:26 +0000

I’ve always found it odd that font-stretch wasn’t implemented from day one. Computers in the old greenscreen monitor days had it back then. Fonts could be either twice as wide, or half as thin. It was simple to just double or halve the pixels to get the effect. Surely this would also be possible on today’s pixel-driven screens? But alas not. Maybe it’s a lot more complicated, due to the way fonts are rendered or something. Pity, really. (And yet faux italic and bold fonts are possible for typefaces that don’t have those options.)

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:26:22 +0000

Couldn’t marquee be rolled into CSS transforms & animation? Seems like a natural fit and I’m sure it can already be done with transform / animation.

By: Eric Meyer

Eric Meyer — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 15:56:26 +0000

Great feedback, Erik—that's really useful to know. Thanks! Scott, it's kind of both but mostly the difficulty in documentation, which is to say accurate documentation. Things are changing quite a bit, and quite a bit still seems to be unresolved. If you look at the draft to which Bruce and I both pointed, it has a lot of red ISSUE text. To pick one representative sample: "The precise syntax of the flex() function is still under discussion." If something that basic still isn't settled, the draft is too unstable to document right now. I wish it were otherwise, but there you have it. Hopefully this clarifies my reasoning for you, Rob. I'll add that Enyo's dependence on a specification that's changing so radically (and still so unformed) seems like a potential problem for the framework (and HP).

By: Rob L.

Rob L. — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:41:09 +0000

Not meaning to give you flak, but yeah, I do consider the Flexible Box Layout module potentially really important if the big webOS push from HP gains any steam at all as webOS 3.0 devices start hitting the market this year… their new framework, Enyo, bases most of its layout stuff on that module.

By: Eddie Sutton

Eddie Sutton — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:04:57 +0000

THIS is why I love your work and follow your posts/tweets religiously! Your “cuts” help guide me toward things that I should REALLY study and learn rather than spinning my wheels with code that is not practical. Thank you, Eric!!

By: Bruce Wisentaner

Bruce Wisentaner — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 05:22:58 +0000

I assume you know Flexible Box Layouts just got updated:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-css3-flexbox-20110322/

By: Thierry Koblentz

Thierry Koblentz — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 23:53:02 +0000

Some day maybe I’ll write a separate pocket reference just for the various CSS layout systems

I think that’s a great idea!

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 23:50:04 +0000

I believe there is activity on the binding front to create a better version of Mozilla's XBL binding language[1]. There is also the -moz-binding property[2] and -webkit-binding although webkit version is disabled by default. Interestingly there is also a JavaScript polyfill for XBL[3]. [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-xbl-20060907/ [2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS/-moz-binding [3] http://code.google.com/p/xbl/

By: Scott Vandehey

Scott Vandehey — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 23:25:25 +0000

I’m looking forward to picking up a copy when it comes out! I’d love to hear a little more about why flexbox didn’t make the cut. I’ve read a lot of posts about the benefits it offers, and I’m seriously considering using it on the next site I make. Is your reluctance to include it purely an issue of difficulty with documentation, or more serious concerns about whether people should use it in the first place?

By: Erik Vorhes

Erik Vorhes — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 23:12:10 +0000

I'd love to see backface-visibility added back in. When its value is set to hidden, it can suppress nasty flickering on certain kinds of transitions.