119108 - Composer should use classes, instead of style attributes, when generating CSS

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(SeaMonkey :: Composer, enhancement)

Description

[Mike Gratton]

When using CSS for formatting, Composer really should create a <style> element
in the document HEAD, containing a class for each style (eg: span.bold {
font-weight: bold; } and use a class for specifing the style, instead of placing
it all inline.

Whist it's evil using presentational names for classes, it's no worse than using
style attributes everywhere, and in most cases I'd expect the resulting HTML to
be both more compact and easier to read.

Comment 1

[Christopher Aillon (sabbatical, not receiving bugmail)]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 16255 ***

Comment 2

[Mike Gratton]

Bug 16255 seems to be about allowing a user to select classes to apply to an
element. This bug is about using classes when generating CSS for styling - the
user isn't involved except when clicking on "Bold" on the toolbar, or whatever.

This isn't a dupe of bug 16255, but may depend on it.

CCing [e-mail] for his opinion..

Comment 3

[Daniel Glazman (:glazou) (not active in Mozilla any more)]

I strongly disagree with the subject of this bug ; no, Composer should not decide
on his own to restrict the namespace of classes, assigning a "bold" class to
bold font weigth.
Instead, a good wysiwyg xml+css editor should be able to let users define a class,
whatever is is name, specifying a style, whatever it is (including bold), and
"assign" it to a button in its UI.

Of course, I am waiting for Hixie's opinion, and he will certainly say that usage
of inline styles is a mark of the devil, and that we should use embedded
stylesheets instead ;-)

Comment 4

[Mike Gratton]

Well, the "using classes is at least slightly less evil than using inline style
all the time" argument is what I was getting at, so, how about it? 8)

Hixie?

I'll try to reopen (not a dupe).

Comment 5

[Christopher Aillon (sabbatical, not receiving bugmail)]

.invisible {
  display: none;
}
.outline {
  border: 5px dotted #eee;
}
.bold {
  font-family: Bookman Old Style;
}
.larger {
  width: 150%; height: 150%;
}
.green {
  background-image: url(tomgreen.jpg);
}

are all reasonable class definitions that have nothing to do with their supposed
property.  Do not force class names upon me.  I know what I want my class names
to be.

Comment 6

[Kathleen :Brade]

-->glazman for triage

Comment 7

[Daniel Glazman (:glazou) (not active in Mozilla any more)]

a) again, I am against the purpose of this bug but that's only my personal
   opinion
b) this is low priority anyway
c) this is partially covered by bug 16255 but I agree that some people may
   want to directly associate a class to a UI button

I am therefore futuring this bug to Mozilla 1.1. I need to figure out if this
is feasible, and for what cost. I'll be re-triaging this bug later, possibly
to WONTFIX if complexity is too high or if this rfe is too far away from
Composer's needs.

Btw, accepting bug and changing title. There is nothing evil in style attribute.
It exists, it is standard, it is alive. Period.

Comment 8

[Robert Kaiser]

MASS-CHANGE:
This bug report is registered in the SeaMonkey product, but has been without a comment since the inception of the SeaMonkey project. This means that it was logged against the old Mozilla suite and we cannot determine that it's still valid for the current SeaMonkey suite. Because of this, we are setting it to an UNCONFIRMED state.

If you can confirm that this report still applies to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it back to the NEW state along with a comment on how you reproduced it on what Build ID, or if it's an enhancement request, why it's still worth implementing and in what way.
If you can confirm that the report doesn't apply to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it to the appropriate RESOLVED state (WORKSFORME, INVALID, WONTFIX, or similar).
If no action happens within the next few months, we move this bug report to an EXPIRED state.

Query tag for this change: mass-UNCONFIRM-20090614

Comment 9

[Robert Kaiser]

MASS-CHANGE:
This bug report is registered in the SeaMonkey product, but still has no comment since the inception of the SeaMonkey project 5 years ago.

Because of this, we're resolving the bug as EXPIRED.

If you still can reproduce the bug on SeaMonkey 2 or otherwise think it's still valid, please REOPEN it and if it is a platform or toolkit issue, move it to the according component.

Query tag for this change: EXPIRED-20100420