Hello CSSers,
Disclaimer: this isn't a specific technical bug fix request — I'm asking for opinions about best practice based on some recent news which could pretty easily slip into philosophy or politics — so Eric if you think this is inappropriate subject matter or too likely to descend into flaming trolldom, I'll understand rapid intervention ;) I don't know how many of you follow the W3C specification working groups discussions. I don't, but I've been alerted to some pretty radical activity thereon just under a week ago. The relevant message is here: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2011Mar/0245.html The message exhaustively details the pertinent points in a long and laborious debate, culminating in the conclusion at line 214: >*** Decision of the Working Group *** > >Therefore, the HTML Working Group hereby adopts the "Allow tables to be >used for presentational purposes" Proposal for ISSUE-130. Of the Change >Proposals before us, this one has drawn the weaker objections. In short, this means that HTML5 rescinds HTML4's guidance on the use of the table markup structure for its presentational layout attributes, such that such use will now be HTML5-valid, provided said table has a role attribute set to "presentation" [1]. I know there are a few people on this list who take W3-spec validity very seriously, to the point of avoiding functional CSS hacks in order to achieve it, and also plenty of people who are very excited by the emerging standards and the opportunities they bring for ditching old laborious ways of doing things. I'd be interested to know if anybody is relieved or excited about this decision — I can well imagine a lot of people who've spent countless hours elaborately conceiving of CSS trickery to emulate these effects leaping for joy at the ability to legitimately, by the book, dig up that convenient markup structure that allows them to throw away huge chunks of CSS and stop worrying about odd fringe cases, unexpected box model bugs, etc. But I'd like to hear people's opinions. Not so much a 'is this a good thing' yes/no poll as an inquiry into whether this changes anything for anybody — will it affect your working methods? [1] Part of the WAI ARIA specification for role definitions: http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria/roles#presentation PS: I checked my calendar too — still a fortnight 'til the 1st of April. Regards, Barney Carroll barney.carr...@gmail.com 07594 506 381 ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [css-d@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
