Google Planning To Remove CSS Regions From Blink

mikejuk writes "Google and Opera split from WebKit to create Blink, their own HTML rendering engine, and everyone was worried about the effect on standards. Now we have the first big example of a split in the form of CSS Regions support. Essentially Regions are used to provide the web equivalent of text flow, a concept very familiar to anyone who has used a desktop publishing program. The basic idea is that you define containers for a text stream which is then flowed from one container to another to provide a complex multicolumn layout. The W3C standard for Regions has mostly been created by Adobe — a long time DTP company. Now the Blink team has proposed removing Regions support to save 10,000 lines of code in 350,000 in the name of efficiency. If Google does remove the Regions code, which looks highly likely, this would leave Safari and IE 10/11 as the only two major browsers to support Regions. Both Apple and Microsoft have an interest in ensuring that their hardware can be used to create high quality magazine style layouts — Google and Opera aren't so concerned. I thought standards were there to implement not argue with." Although mikejuk thinks this is a bad thing, a lot of people think CSS Regions are awful. Mozilla has never intended to implement them, instead offering the CSS Fragmentation proposal as an alternative. One major flaw of CSS Regions is its reliance upon markup that is used solely for layout, violating the separation of content and style that CSS is intended to enforce.

Ugh

[rh2600]

Regions are a horrible, messy, awkward layout model that fundamentally contradicts many of the benefits of HTML layout - particularly for different devices and screen sizes. If you think you need them, just make a PDF already - Adobe already has you covered.

Edge Cases

[American AC in Paris]

Google is aiming more and more for the core, at the edge's expense.

They provide middling accessibility support, because it isn't something most people need. They dropped MathML support, because it isn't something that most people need. Now, they're dropping CSS Regions, because it isn't something that most people need.

It increasingly appears that you can have your Google product in any color, so long as it's red, green, blue, and yellow. One size fits most, and tough for you if it doesn't.

Adobe's Red Hand

[ScottCooperDotNet]

What a surprise two of the three editors of this standard are Adobe employees.

Not a standard.

[pavon]

The W3C standard for Regions has mostly been created by Adobe ... I thought standards were there to implement not argue with.

CSS Regions is not a W3C standard. It is a Working Draft. The entire point of publishing a working draft is to solicit feedback from the community. There have been several working drafts that were never promoted to final recommendations, because there was no community consensus that they were a good idea. What Google and Mozilla are doing is a perfectly constructive part of the standardization process.

Re:Ugh

[mythosaz]

No graphic designer, EVER has said they wanted to use Comic Sans.

I can think of one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V... [wikipedia.org]