[whatwg] Re: media types

[Kai Hendry]

On Mon, Jul 26, 2004 at 12:43:08 +0100, Malcolm Rowe wrote:
> >Therefor I would like to suggest a read-only "window.medium" set to a
> >media type ("screen" | "print" | "projection" | "tv" | "handheld" |
> >"speech" etc).
> 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? 

This is a *really* bad idea for anyone who longs for device
independence. I was already pissed off enough with media queries until
Ian cooled me down. :)

15:34 < @draq> Ok, I was thinking that media queries might encourage people to do device dependent engineering. I will instead think of them giving the <b>options</b> that designers want.
15:35 < @draq> :)
15:35 < @Hixie> yes
15:36 < @Hixie> they help authors create just one document that can then be used on all devices
15:36 < @Hixie> instead the authors might need to create one document per device, which is much much worse.

Web Apps should not change "behaviour" between devices. Besides the
media types are getting increasingly blurred and outdated.

Further reading:
http://natalian.org/archives/2004/06/18/the-third-way/