Re: [css3-flexbox] visibility:collapse on flexbox items

On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 4:58 PM, fantasai <fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net> wrote:
> On 10/03/2011 02:36 PM, Ojan Vafai wrote:
>>
>> Now that I understand the behavior of visibility:collapse in tables, I
>> don't think we should extend the behavior elsewhere. We
>> should just have visibility:collapse work the same way on flexboxes as it
>> does elsewhere (i.e. like visibility:hidden).
>> Otherwise, visibility:collapse becomes this complicated beast that noone
>> can use because the rules are different for each
>> display type.
>>
>> I agree with Alex that we need a way to show/hide items without wiping
>> their display property, but we already have that with the "hidden"
>> attribute (see
>> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#hidden-elements).
>
> I think you missed Andrew's point. Nevermind the syntax, the *behavior* of
> "display: none"
> is not actually what you'd want for dynamic show/hide behavior. Because it
> takes the element
> entirely out of flow, the hidden element no longer influences layout at all.
> Which means
> that by showing/hiding the element, you are adding/removing its influence on
> the parent's
> intrinsic sizes, and potentially thus also its size--this is not always what
> you want.
>
> Another side effect is adding/removing its influence on list counters, etc.
>
> We don't actually have the right capabilities in CSS to do good dynamic
> showing/hiding
> of elements. Visibility: collapse was supposed to do this, but it only works
> for tables
> and then only when there are no rowspans/colspans involved.
>
> See also the discussion at this thread:
>  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2008Feb/0130.html

Ooh, I'd forgotten about the effects that display:none has on list
counters.  Dammit, I hate all that magic.  >_<  (I now understand
*why* that magic occurs, though.)

Okay, so there is still some value in something that acts similarly to
display:none but without suppressing all that stuff.  Unfortunately,
your definition for blocks doesn't work for flexbox items - if the
item is still in the flexbox but not visible, it'll look like a
double-width packing space if "flex-pack:justify" is set, which is
undesirable.  (Plus, it needs to be direction-agnostic, or at least
respond to the flexbox directions, rather than always shrinking height
to 0.)

I'm not sure what a general definition would look like; I suspect we'd
need specialized definitions for every display type.  For flexbox, the
best definition is probably something like "position: absolute;
overflow: hidden; main-size: 0;".

In any case, until we figure this out more generally, I think Flexbox
shouldn't have special text for this.

~TJ

Received on Tuesday, 4 October 2011 00:38:23 UTC