> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Asbjørn Ulsberg > > While HTML is a semantic markup language, it's not something > to ignore that it's mostly used for visual rendering of > content, often accompanied by a CSS document. While I'm a > strong believer of separation between structure (HTML), > presentation (CSS) and functionality (JavaScript), I think it > could be useful for the HTML specification to -- within > limits -- define how each and every element's default CSS > properties and values should be like.
I totally agree with you at the point of the importance of layer separation, but I'm not sure about specifying the default CSS values. There are a few options: * let the CSS be built from scratch * No styles are defined, so by default the CSS values are empty. I don't think this a good option, because people won't define their styles from scratch, resulting in vendors still needing to define default styles. So that's no solution. * Vendors keep defining the default values for every element * If a web developer disagrees with the vendors, he will just define it in his CSS. * the HTML WG defines default values for every element * This can be a solution for HTML as web representation. Defining defaults can result in vendors implementing the same defaults, so it looks the same in every browser by default. I think it's good to think about these things, but I wonder if it would change anything. What exactly are you looking for? Defining that 'normal' text is black by default and links are blue-ish? Because that's done already, most default styles are uniformly, but maybe informally, defined. As the new HTML spec is gradually being developed, a new document could be written about default styles, but I don't think this should be in the new HTML spec. I personally think such a complementary document, about the default styles, is a good idea. These issues should certainly be addressed in cooperation with the CSS WG. Any other thoughts? -- Erik van Kempen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Student, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands
