Closed Bug 18777 Opened 25 years ago Closed 25 years ago

RFE: support a "required" keyword for LINKed stylesheets

Categories

(SeaMonkey :: General, enhancement, P3)

enhancement

Tracking

(Not tracked)

VERIFIED INVALID

People

(Reporter: sidr, Assigned: leger)

Details

Split off from Bug 17309 "Wait for primary style sheets before constructing frames" to avert that bug going off on a tangent: Adding a behaviour for a "required" keyword (and the keyword itself if it is not supported) for LINKed stylesheets would provide a true alternative to rfc2557 MHTML in the browser (the RFE in bug 18764), and, if "important" were also supported as suggested, provide the author with two levels of escalation, which ought to be enough. If "required" was dependably interpreted and supported in all future versions as just that, support for MHTML in the browser would probably be unnecessary for this purpose. In fact, I couldn't advocate the latter without some clear and unmistakable way for authors to signal that a LINKed stylesheet was required, lest MHTML get overused or abused. The point would be that layout would not begin until a "required" stylesheet was recieved and parsed. Those serving very complex content (HTML+CSS from an XML+CSS backend, for example) may want to be able to request such a guarantee.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 25 years ago
Resolution: --- → INVALID
s/required/important/ and we already do _exactly_ this: <link rel="important stylesheet" ...> ...will block loading of the document until that stylesheet is loaded. Marking INVALID.
Well, OK. I still think that overloading the meaning of "important" to also imply "required" could be confusing to the people who buy the dummies books - or never presented in those because it is confusing. And having both an "important" and a "required" keyword implemented to mean only their natural meaning would provide more flexibility for the future. As stylesheets become absolutely necessary with XML, preserving a way for the page author to indicate that a UA should make best efforts (more than one attempt) to load a stylesheet first ("important") as well one to as block display without it ("required") could be useful. So the suggestion is really to back the overloading of "required" out of "important" and add "required" so that moderation is possible. Personally I wouldn't want to see many of the books recommending (or many of the graphical editors defaulting to) adding the "important" keyword (meaning required) to *ALL* stylesheets for lack of a moderate alternative - and given the way that some stupid memes have gone pandemic earlier in the history of HTML usage, that could happen. This suggestion is very late, however, and the proper forum is elsewhere.
QA Contact: leger → chrisd
QA Assigning to Chris Dreckman to verify.
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
Verifying invalid
Product: Browser → Seamonkey
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