What exactly is your definition of "box"?
Well, depends on context, but within XUL, -moz-box. Within CSS the Box Model.
A frame in real life is just a border around something
The border part is not mandatory; a generic frame is just a structural concept. For example: "framing an argument". And obviously html/xul/other frames don't always have borders/splitters, but remain frames.
That depends on what one means by "frame". What exactly do you mean when you use that word?
I really have to come back to your remark that the universe is very complex. At various points we're required to simplify. "Exactly" I mean that a frame is a mechanism of some sort that underlies more obvious layout actors like XUL boxes/HTML blocks/CSS.
'Learners want some brief understanding of how boxes/blocks/CSS boxes and dynamic XUL AOM layout features are implemented and maintained.
So they want to know that these objects have a width/height/padding/border/margin? Anything else would be far from "brief"...
A beginner need only know width/height as you say.
However, if that beginner is inclined to ask "What's the GO of it?" as one famous physicist put it, then a usefully insightful and comforting answer might go like this:
"there is a system of frames underneath that is responsible for all the more obvious layout primitives, including CSS boxes, and thusly XUL boxes, HTML blocks and most other things, eg tooltips and native widgets. When a document is reflowed for any reason it is ultimately this frame system that is responsible for organising and applying whatever changes are required. Changes to larger scale objects via display:none or similar can be seen ultimately as the modification of content in this frame system, although higher-level boxes (eg) are also managed as discrete items by XUL.
It is the frame system that is effectively the final integration point for content, for layout concepts like boxes and blocks and for their associated style information".
Please advise a useful concept that can be used as a basis for such explainations. Frame has been used in the past.'
The useful concept here is a box as described in the CSS Box Model, imo.
I agree. I've only said that frames are a useful explaination of what's underneath a box, et al. But it is also a more general concept since it underlies SVG canvases and <framesets>, etc, which XUL boxes and HTML blocks have no *surface* relevance to.
Again, XUL layout and non-XUL layout are very very different. You can think of it as two separate layout engines, and that will be a better mental model (though they live in the same layout library).
Opinion from Mozilla developers is divided on whether that is a good recommendation, and various forms of intermixing currently possible don't support it either.
But I suspect that change is academic, since frame-like conceptsWhat is a "frame-like concept"?
A frame-like concept is exactly what I said: a concept in the subject matter area of frames as that area is commonly understood by the ignorant.
Teaching is about concepts, and is not enslaved by technology. Some people learn better by thinking about sport. Do you want to mandate that no sport appropriations should be made against mozilla technology because "football" is not a keyword? That would disenfranchise a whole class of potential users.
Of course that is an intentionally ridiculous example, and yet it is factually the case that placing problems and concepts in sporting terms helps some learners, regardless of the actual subject matter.
Rather than appropriate-without-prejudice, I've tried (sigh) to explain here how useful a term is that ultimately has been coined or appropriated by Mozilla developers.
I have no ideology about what a frame is in Mozilla; I just said its a useful concept for helping learners, and if it can be retained in any sense, then that's a good thing to me. The alternative is for something inside the layout system to be radically changed, so that the current, limited relevance of "frame" goes away. I prefer not to see that.
This discussion is pretty much exhausted for my purposes. Just because a concept has little use (or is perhaps personally offensive) for your purposes, doesn't mean it's not useful to others.
- N.
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