Re: Suppress scroll bars - an idea

Mike Batchelor (mikebat@clark.net)
Mon, 3 Jul 1995 21:49:13 -0400 (EDT)

Walter Ian Kaye once wrote...
>
> At 04:50p 07/03/95, dba@althingi.is wrote:
>
> >A browser could have pageing rather than scrolling.
> >The page is not so device specific.
> >In HTML we can only deal with text on like paper rolls.
> >When the paper rolls get long and numerous we realise that
> >it would be nicer to have books with pages.
> >This has happened before in history.
> >Many things about pages should definately be dealt with
> >only in style sheets but the page is so basic to our
> >traditional way of working with text that outlawing it
> >from HTML is going to cost a lot of trouble.
> >Certainly when it does not cost any cluttering of the
> >syntax we should give some thought to how the page idea fits
> >in to what is decided.
>
> No one is proposing outlawing it. The problem is that page size cannot be
> known in advance.

The *browser* knows the page size, or even if there is a screen at all
that can be paginated. Therefore, a make-page-breaks style attribute
would tell the browser to paginate the document to best fit on the screen
it has to work with.

> To use your book metaphor, the hardcover might be twice
> the size of the pages, so the book won't fit on the shelf, except sideways
> maybe. Or the cover might be half the size of the pages, and the pages
> would get frayed.
> You could choose an arbitrary page size, but that would be making many
> assumptions. At least be sure no graphic is wider than 470 pixels, because
> that is the standard imaging area width for Netscape and Mosaic browsers
> when used on screens 640 pixels wide. Anyone with a 512-pixel wide screen
> or smaller would get the wrong size, although they're probably used to it
> already. ;)

Or, the browser could scale down images to fit the page it has to work
with. This is probably a good idea regardless of whether you scroll or
page through the document. Inline images are described as non-essential
decoration, and the style guides I have read suggest using a link to a
full-size image if the graphics are really essential. Therefore I think
it's perfectly fine for the browser to down-size an image to fit the
screen. If I'm not mistaken, the HTML 3 <IMG> tag will let you give
attributes that define a size relative to the browser page, as well as
specifying a size in pixels.

It seems to me that resizing the page and paginating it is a natural
extension of this idea.

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