[whatwg] Re: media types

[Ian Hickson]

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004, Malcolm Rowe wrote:
>
> Not a bad idea, I suppose, but I'd like to understand more about the use 
> case for this kind of functionality. What *behaviour* (not presentation, 
> since that would be CSS) do you expect you'd change based on the active 
> media type?

You could change, e.g., whether to display an animated chart on a 
<canvas>, or whether to display a static chart (when printing).


> Secondly, is 'the current media type' only ever a single value, or can more
> than one media type be active at one time (e.g., 'projection' + 'screen'?). 

CSS defines it as impossible for there to be two modes on one canvas 
active at any one time, so window.mediaMode can only ever be one value.


> Finally, 'window.medium' is a really bad choice for the name. I know that
> 'medium' is the right word (if only one can be active), but no-one's going to
> associate 'medium' with 'active media type'. 'mediaType' would be better. 

I agree; I considered mediaType but that's often used to mean MIME type, 
which is why I instead called it mediaMode.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
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Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'