[whatwg] [html5] window.print() undefined

[Dimitri Glazkov]

On 7/19/05, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> > b) To capture the essence of the browsing session, I would like to build
> > a breadcrumb at the bottom of the printed page, displaying titles and
> > urls of pages the user have visited on the site during this visit.
> 
> That seems like something that would be useful regardless of the medium.
> Put it in the content, and then hide it in the media you don't want it
> visible for, e.g.:
> 
>   @media screen {
>      footer .breadcrumbs { display: none; }
>   }

This one was a trick question, sorry :) The per-session breadcrumbs
most definitely do not belong in markup. This breaks REST paradigm and
makes things like caching next to impossible. It's just wrong use of
HTTP.

The only correct way to implement them is to generate and render then
on/from the client side. Obviously, this doesn't impact either line of
reasoning behind print/screen media and does not invalidate what you
were saying -- consider it a sideline story :)

However, I think am starting to see what you're seeing. Basically,
your approach is to provide all content in the DOM tree and then flip
switches as needed to present it to various media types. Right?
Essentially, you are creating all-in-one DOM tree, where all content
co-exists in the same DOM space, then providing illusion of disparate
DOM spaces by turning on/off parts of the tree as needed using CSS. In
a way, you are using CSS to control representation of information,
rather than just content presentation.

This is the exact opposite of my "sanboxing" thinking, where I suggest
that separate DOM trees (representations) may be created.
 
But what about the cases where content needs to be reordered or just
plain needs to be slightly different? Is that still realm of CSS?

:DG<