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This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

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Re: This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

#31

Post by haberman »

null_ptr wrote: post #29
haberman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What solution does CSS offer for three-column layout (with a resizable center column) that is remotely as simple as: Fixed left column. Liquid center column Fixed right column.

Fixed left column. Liquid center column Fixed right column. The whole point of CSS is to take things like width="200px" out of the markup.

You have to show what your CSS would be also. My point is that the CSS you have to write to get your example to look like mine is extremely complicated when all you have is the box model.

Re: This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

#32

Post by fauigerzigerk »

EGreg wrote: post #7

freenet and other services already do this. You can already use your browser to browse freenet, if you get the freenet program. They recommend using Chrome in Incognito mode for maximum privacy. And it is impervious to DNS takedowns and you can even set up a darknet. It's used in China a lot. Also Perfect Dark is used. They operate on distributed hash tables. The problem is that without a central server, the only way…

The problem I have with freenet is that I don't want to blindly store or transfer other people's encrypted data.

I think, if we take some of the powers away from the government, it is all the more important that we are able to make a judgement on the kind of content and communications that we want to support.

No single entity should be able to control all access to information, not even a democratic government. But turning the tables completely and make everyone help anyone spread any kind of information can't be the solution.

I'm totally aware of the dilemma we're in. Knowing what other people transfer over our machines puts us in a position of "must make judgement and be liable". Not knowing puts us in the position of "cannot make a judgement even if we want to".

It's just a difficult problem.

Re: This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

#33

Post by olavk »

haberman wrote: post #13

The W3C is broken: it has spent the last 10 years standardizing ideas instead of existing practice . This is totally backwards and leads to standards that are too complicated, unrealistic, and in many cases not needed at all. The W3C was originally created to standardize HTML, which was already being used by many vendors and users but in incompatible ways. That is exactly the right situation for creating a standard.…

I agree with you in general, but not in the case of CSS.

The CSS layout model were indeed based on exactly the layout properties of "presentational HTML" which people were using for style and layout at that time. It was just made more fine grained, and separated from the markup.

For example, the much hated "float/clear" layout model were based on the align="left|right" and clear="left|right" attributes which Netscape (I believe) introduce on img- and table-elements, and which people did use a lot. The layout model of tables were also widely used, and that was codified with the display:table-* properties, which again provides exactly the same layout model in CSS as tables provided via markup.

The problem was basically that IE development were frozen for many years. IE implemented the float-related CSS before the freeze, but not the table-model. I believe IE 8 were the first version of IE to support the table model, more than a decade after CSS2 became a recommendation.

This resulted in period of many years where the float model were supported via CSS in most browsers, but the table-model were not. This in turn resulted in an amazing amount of confusion, and people believing that floats are somehow the CSS's substitute for tables.

Re: This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

#34

Post by rimantas »

haberman wrote: post #31
null_ptr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fixed left column. Liquid center column Fixed right column. The whole point of CSS is to take things like width="200px" out of the markup.

You have to show what your CSS would be also. My point is that the CSS you have to write to get your example to look like mine is extremely complicated when all you have is the box model.

There is nothing complicated, even using floats. Usig display: table-* it's damn easy. You also got CSS columns, and flex box.

Re: This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

#35

Post by Groxx »

haberman wrote: post #31
null_ptr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fixed left column. Liquid center column Fixed right column. The whole point of CSS is to take things like width="200px" out of the markup.

You have to show what your CSS would be also. My point is that the CSS you have to write to get your example to look like mine is extremely complicated when all you have is the box model.

Like this:

  #left{
    float:left;
    width:200px;
    margin-right: -200px;
  }
  #right{
    float:right;
    width:200px;
    margin-left: -200px;
  }
  #middle{
    float: left;
    margin-left: 200px;
    margin-right: 200px;
  }
People tend to avoid this relatively simple solution because of the double-left-margin bug in IE 5 & 6, but that's getting to be an excessively old set of browsers. And even then, it's usually fixed with a "display:inline;" on the ones with left margins.

edit: it's not an ideal solution, as it has those negative values which have to match the related positive ones. Which is solved with something like Sass or Less, because CSS lacks any "programming" abilities, which I see as its main failure. Even variables and simple math would be acceptable, but instead, nothing.

Re: This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

#36

Post by EGreg »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #32
EGreg wrote: post #7

freenet and other services already do this. You can already use your browser to browse freenet, if you get the freenet program. They recommend using Chrome in Incognito mode for maximum privacy. And it is impervious to DNS takedowns and you can even set up a darknet. It's used in China a lot. Also Perfect Dark is used. They operate on distributed hash tables. The problem is that without a central server, the only way…

The problem I have with freenet is that I don't want to blindly store or transfer other people's encrypted data. I think, if we take some of the powers away from the government, it is all the more important that we are able to make a judgement on the kind of content and communications that we want to support. No single entity should be able to control all access to information, not even a democratic government. But t…

If you don't store other's people data, who will?

If those people store their own data, how will you get it if they disconnect their computer from the network, or it goes down?

And more importantly, if their computer is the only place to get the data, then how do you make the "host" of the data untraceable?

Re: This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

#37

Post by EGreg »

xtacy wrote: post #10
EGreg wrote: post #7

freenet and other services already do this. You can already use your browser to browse freenet, if you get the freenet program. They recommend using Chrome in Incognito mode for maximum privacy. And it is impervious to DNS takedowns and you can even set up a darknet. It's used in China a lot. Also Perfect Dark is used. They operate on distributed hash tables. The problem is that without a central server, the only way…

Yes, there are a ton of other overlays that do p2p. The advantage of a browser is that no one needs to download/install any software to avail p2p features.

Well yes, if browser makers create their own version of freenet built in, that would be true.

Re: This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

#39

Post by kerryfalk »

Groxx wrote: post #35
haberman wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to show what your CSS would be also. My point is that the CSS you have to write to get your example to look like mine is extremely complicated when all you have is the box model.

Like this: #left{ float:left; width:200px; margin-right: -200px; } #right{ float:right; width:200px; margin-left: -200px; } #middle{ float: left; margin-left: 200px; margin-right: 200px; } People tend to avoid this relatively simple solution because of the double-left-margin bug in IE 5 & 6, but that's getting to be an excessively old set of browsers. And even then, it's usually fixed with a "display:inline;" on the…

Or, to make it _really_ simple:

  1
  2
  3

  div.column {
    margin: 10px;
    width: 200px;
    float: left;
    }
EDIT: Missed the key constraint, resizable center column. What I have above won't work for that, but shows that replacing tables isn't very difficult.

Re: This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

#40

Post by drdaeman »

haberman wrote: post #25
rimantas wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CSS offers many solutions to layout. The problem is what a lot of web surfers are stuck with old versions of some particular browser.

What solution does CSS offer for three-column layout (with a resizable center column) that is remotely as simple as: Fixed left column. Liquid center column Fixed right column.

Upcoming CSS3 features (some browsers support some, but not others).

    
        ...
        ...
        ...
- Template layout module (W3C)

    #box { display: '  a   b  c'
                     200px * 200px;
           width: 100%; }
    #box .left { position: a; }
    #box .center { position: b; }
    #box .right { position: c; }
- Flexible box model (Mozilla)

    #box { display: box; box-orient: horizontal; width: 100%; }
    #box .left, #box .right { width: 200px; }
    #box .center { box-flex: 1; }
- Grid positioning module (Microsoft)

    #box { columns: 3; grid-columns: 200px * 200px; }
    #box.left, #box.right { width: 200px; }
Disclaimer: I didn't test anything, just wrote the code from memory, peeking at random on-subject Google results. It is possible that I forgot, misspelled or misunderstood something.
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