Attributes ? Inline Styles ? Context ? ID ? Class ? A mix ? *sigh*
I'm not happy with the CSS Policy Manager I implemented. It currently lets users of BlueGriffon decide in all dialogs how an action should be performed: through HTML attributes, through inline styles, or through embedded styles attached to an ID or a class. That's far too complex for many users and the resulting dialogs are so painful that I hate them myself. I am then going to revamp it entirely and remove the corresponding bits from the dialogs. I will probably also remove support for HTML presentational attributes... BlueGriffon will then rely 100% on CSS for presentation... That was not possible a few years ago because of the browsers' landscape but I think it's now a more - if not perfectly - reasonable target. The whole Table Layout dialog is already 100% CSS-based.
In summary, the Preferences panel will offer the following choices:
- Let BlueGriffon decide by itself how it adds styles and let it pick IDs and classes for me when needed (enter a prefix below)
- Let BlueGriffon decide by itself how it adds styles but prompt me when a new ID or class is needed
- Let me decide
It's clearly (much) harder to implement but I am sure the whole CSS/HTML machinery should be hidden as much as it can. The average user - and that includes myself - does not want to know about the technical details as soon as the result is clean, standards-compliant and what he/she expects from a rendering point of view. Advanced users will still have the possibility to edit their stylesheets directly through the CSS Manager.
All in all and in my opinion, this proposal is good for both beginners and advanced users. Comments?
