Re: Suppress scroll bars - an idea

H&kon W Lie (howcome@w3.org)
Mon, 3 Jul 1995 18:57:43 +0200

[cross-posted to www-style@w3.org]

Mike Batchelor writes:

> Isn't it a feature of the <style> tag, and cascading style sheets, that
> the user of the browser can have his/her own local style sheet, and that
> the cascading style sheets interact with each other to produce a final
> style that is a combination of user and author presentation preferences?

True.

> If so, then a browser that implemented style sheets would have the option
> to turn scroll bars on/off, if such a style attribute was part of the
> proposed <style> tags and sheets.

True.

The last implementation of style sheets in Arena [1] allows the style
sheet to control presentation properties of the HTML source display. A
more detailed descrition can be found in [2]. While this may seem to
be a minor issue, it's a significant step from only being able to
attach presentation properties to HTML (or SGML) tags.

The hard part ahead is to figure out what sort of style properties
should be on the sanctioned list, and whom (author/reader/both) should
be able to influence them.

Turning scroll-bars on and off seems quite specific to current
GUIs. Also, just turning them off without describing any alternative
comes close to being screen-size dependant. Instead, I would propose
being able to set one out of several user interface metaphors (maybe
window, page, VR), or saying something about the value of screen
real-estate: if the user values it highly, scroll-bars -- along with
the display of the URL -- would perhaps be taken away. Ultimately, one
must leave some presentation descisions to the application.

[1] http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Arena/0.97.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Style/css/draft.html

Regards,

-h&kon

Hakon W Lie, WWW project CERN, CH-1211 Geneva 23
http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/People/howcome/