[whatwg] Suggestion for new element/attribute

Aux aux at hexmode.org
Thu Apr 26 00:34:36 PDT 2007


This code works fine. The only thing is to move * width into CSS.

<table>
    <tr>
       <td>
          <div>blablabla</div>
          . . .
       </td>
       <td width="*"> </td>
    </tr>
</table>

Brenton Strine wrote:
> Consider this case:
>
> You have a table one row high with two cells. It's width
> is 100%.
>
> You want the width of the left cell to be only as big as
> the content, and you want the right cell to take up all
> the rest of the space.
>
> However, the amount of content in both the right and the
> left cell changes, so you can't give a percent or a pixel
> width. 
>
> In that situation, you could either 1) intentionally give
> the right cell an incorrect width of 100%, or 2) put a
> whole lot of invisible text in it, so that the cell
> always expands enough to make the left cell only the
> minimum size needed.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
> [mailto:bhawkeslewis at googlemail.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 3:44 PM
> To: Brenton Strine
> Cc: whatwg at lists.whatwg.org
> Subject: Re: [whatwg] Suggestion for new
> element/attribute
>
> This sounds very much like something that should be done
> in CSS, not HTML. But can you explain what you mean by
> "expand ... as if it were full of text"? If something is
> already a given size, then filling it with text should
> not make it expand.
>
> --
> Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
>
> Brenton Strine wrote:
>   
>> Hello,
>>
>> I am new here, so please let me know if I am doing
>> anything out of order.
>>
>> I would like to make a suggestion for soemthing I want
>>     
> to
>   
>> see in HTML5.
>>
>> I call it the inflate tag. <inflate>.
>>
>> The purpose of this tag is to expand that which
>>     
> contains
>   
>> it as if it were full of text. I have seen many
>>     
> websites
>   
>> where the designers were forced to put long strings of
>> hidden text into a cell in order to make it expand
>> correctly. Thus text browsers find strange segments
>>     
> like
>   
>> this:
>>
>> w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w
>>     
> w
>   
>> w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w
>>     
> w
>   
>> w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w
>>     
> w
>   
>> w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w
>>     
> w
>   
>> w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w
>>     
> w
>   
>> w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w
>>     
> w
>   
>> w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w
>>     
> w
>   
>> w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w
>>     
> w
>   
>> w w w w w w w w 
>>
>> Of course, developers already have the ability to
>>     
> specify
>   
>> the width in terms of pixels, ems, percent, and tons of
>> other stuff. But there are times, particularly in fluid
>> design, when you can't get the div to work the way you
>> want without text to expand it.
>>
>> This could even be an attribute rather than a tag:
>> width="inflate".
>>
>> Brenton
>>
>>     
>
>   



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