[development] About CSS3

[Darrel O'Pry]

On Wed, 2007-01-03 at 18:30 -0800, Steven Wittens wrote:
> Drupal 5.0 will be the first Drupal that includes some CSS3. Several  
> people have brought up concerns or 'bug reports' about this.
> 
> Facts:
> 
> - CSS3 is a huge standard which is still in draft form, although many  
> parts of it haven't been changed in the past couple of years. It  
> consists of several modules, which are usually independent from each  
> other.
> 
> - Several parts of CSS3 are already well supported by some (e.g.  
> 'display') or even all the major browsers (e.g. 'opacity').
> 
> - CSS has always clearly specified how parsers are to deal with  
> unknown styles. e.g. Setting "bunnies: fluffy" or "display: foobar"  
> should not have any effect in any modern browser, as it is not part  
> of any CSS standard. Both rules are treated as if they weren't there  
> at all.
> 
> - The W3C provides a CSS3 option in their CSS validator, showing that  
> they promote active use of the spec.
> 
> With that in mind, I'd like to set an official policy on CSS3 in  
> Drupal, namely that we allow it. By definition, it should not cause  
> any problems in older browsers, and it can be used to provide extra  
> UI cues (opacity for disabled items) or nice style enhancements (e.g.  
> text-shadow in Garland, for Safari).
> 
> The only big problem for now is that some of the CSS3 throws a  
> warning in Firefox's debug log (e.g. "display: inline-block" in  
> core). While annoying, this is IMO Firefox' fault, not ours.  
> Especially because Firefox is happy to accept the other CSS3 in  
> Garland (e.g. "opacity: 0.5"). It is also only visible if you have  
> some sort of development tools active.
> 
> It seems most of the reactions against this are knee-jerk: "Drupal  
> doesn't care about valid CSS" or "What's this scary error message?".  
> IMO this is the price to pay for progress. Drupal is still sticking  
> to a standard, and one which has real-world implementations.
> 
> Objections? :P
> 
> Steven Wittens

I have none. Maybe if people start using it, adoption and ratification
process will accelerate. I would like to see that happen myself. 

.darrel.