


From: Chris Wilson <Chris.Wilson@microsoft.com>
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:57:45 -0700
Message-ID: <0B0F5B61B85C2847852ED3B251F89F6FEFEEDFEEA6@NA-EXMSG-W601.wingroup.windeploy.ntdev.microsoft.com>

If this spec is called "Behavioral Extensions to CSS," it begs the questions of "what's the relationship of this and Microsoft's behaviors, heavily used and supported in 80% of the web browsers currently in use?  Why isn't this just the 'behavior' property that Microsoft implemented nearly a decade ago, since it seems to do the same thing?"

The original document was far more than just a first WG - Microsoft implemented a feature called CSS Behaviors, and it's in fairly heavy use today (for VML, SMIL applied to HTML, and a bunch of custom controls as well).  If you want to call the binding feature "behavioral extensions to CSS", I'm all for it - but then I think you should just use the 'behavior' property.  That would make a lot more sense to me anyway, to enable fallback cases.  (Seriously, I do think that would be a good idea.)

This spec uses the term "behavior" exactly once in the specification, other than referring to the original draft or its own title.  That seems odd.  The "previous draft" contained the word "behavior" nearly twenty times, other than referring to the title of the draft or in examples of the property name.  I'm just saying "behavior" is a loaded word, and we should either be making this CSS feature either really inherit spiritually from the previous one, and (in the style of the WHATWG) evolve the current/past Microsoft implementation - or we should call it something else.


-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Nelson (ATC)
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2007 3:03 AM
To: Chris Wilson
Subject: FW: [becss] "Behavioral Extensions to CSS" no longer an appropriate name


-----Original Message-----
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2007 2:40 PM
To: www-style@w3.org
Subject: Re: [becss] "Behavioral Extensions to CSS" no longer an appropriate name

Paul Nelson (ATC) wrote:

> Chris Wilson, one of the original authors, believes that it is not good
> that the title of the specification has remained as is in spite of the
> fact the document being essentially a different and limited topic.
> We would like to suggest that a new title, such as "Binding to CSS", be
> given to the document due to the significant change in focus of the
> document. The behavior parts have been removed from the document.

I disagree, and I am also one of the original authors.

The behavioural parts have been removed from the spec. But the
spec is still all about adding behaviours to an element. Call that
binding and the public will not understand it ; call it behaviours
and they will understand it.
The original document never went beyond the status of first WD, is ages
ago and is totally forgotten. There is no confusion at all here and the
current spec remains a spiritual descendant of the first one.

Received on Monday, 22 October 2007 20:58:19 GMT
