Rename the Alignment Properties to Generic Names

Spec:
css3-align, css3-flexbox
Owner:
fantasai
Status:
Closed
Added:
2012-05-16
Action:
Choose some names.
Issue:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2012May/0476.html

RESOLVED

The WG resolved to go with Option D based on a straw poll in a telcon: justify-self/content/items and align-self/content/items.

Background

Fundamentally, we're breaking down the properties along two axes:

  • in which dimension are things being shifted? There are two:
    • X) inline (main)
    • Y) stacking (cross)
  • what's being aligned within what?
    • A) element itself within its containing block
    • B) element's contents within itself
    • C) element's child items within their container

We're going with 'justify' vs. 'align' to distinguish X vs. Y, but still need a scheme for A/B/C

Problem Statement

What naming scheme do we use to indicate various alignment targets?

Proposal(s)

See http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-align/#overview

If we don't have a clear consensus, we can pick something now and leave it open as an LC issue to give us more time.

Set 1: Box/Content/Default

  +--------X----------------Y------
A |     box-justify      box-align
B | content-justify  content-align
C | default-justify  default-align

Set 2: Self/Content/Item

  +--------X----------------Y------
A |    self-justify     self-align
B | content-justify  content-align
C |    item-justify     item-align

Set 3: Outside/Inside/Items

  +--------X----------------Y------
A | justify-outside  align-outside
B | justify-inside   align-inside
C | justify-items    align-items

Added after initial discussions…

Set 4: Self/Content/Items Inversion

  +--------X----------------Y------
A | justify-self     align-self
B | justify-content  align-content
C | justify-items    align-items

Set 5: Self/Content/Items Inline/Stack

  +--------X----------------Y------
A | align-self-inline     align-self-stack
B | align-content-inline  align-content-stack
C | align-items-inline    align-items-stack

Summary of Comments

Anton:

For me, Set 1 is too abstract. (Which box? Which default?)  I like
self/content/item because I find it very self-descriptive.  I like
outside/inside/items because it will match nicely with our future
display-inside and display-outside.  I wouldn't have trouble
remembering and applying the property names in Set 2 or Set 3.

Florian:

box and content make sense to me, and so do outside and inside.
self and content are a bit cryptic to me.
As for default vs item, no strong opinion. Neither seem very much
clearer than the other. 

Remy:

outer-align; outer-justify;
inner-align; inner-justify;
child-outer-align; child-outer-justify;

However, I'm not completely sold to "child-outer-align" and "child-outer-justify".
This case is better solved with a pseudo-class. 

Tab:

[Set 3] is my favorite.

For one, I value the swapped ordering.  Having "justify" and "align"
come first makes more sense to me, given our general rules for how
alignment works.  It also puts us slightly farther away from the
existing text/vertical-align properties, which is good.

For two, outside/inside is very difficult to confuse, especially as we
introduce more things using the inside/outside pair.

Alan:

[Set 3] is my choice as well. Grouping these related properties together
with justify and align coming first makes the most sense to me.
I vastly prefer items [over default], as that conveys to me a group of
discrete things to distribute.
And I have a slight preference for inside/outside over self/content.
I do not think 'box' should be used - it's too overloaded as a term.
So I think this should be the easiest set to explain to someone new to
the concepts.

dbaron:

I'm actually not so happy about the *-outside terms here.  The
display-outside/inside distinction is about two halves of the same
thing; here' align-outside and align-items are about the same
behavior, on different things.

Christoph:

The “Inversion” row makes some sense, because ‘justify-box’/‘align-box’
sound like English phrases in the imperative mood, whereas ‘box-justify’/
‘box-align’ sound odder (to me as a non-native speaker) than
‘box-justification’/‘box-alignment’.

‘default-*’ seems just wrong, not least because of the ‘default’ keyword.

I think ‘box’ and ‘content’ are good terms and without doing further
reading (and thinking), I’m not sure why we need to be able to specify
the default box alignment for items.

Regarding ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ (or maybe ‘outer’ and ‘inner’) I think
the latter as proposed doesn’t match my mental model, which makes me prefer

  +--------X--------------Y--------
A | justify-outside  align-outside
B | justify[-self]   align[-self]
C | justify-inside   align-inside

Lea:

The align- and justify- prefixes are confusing to me too,
especially the latter. However, I understand the concerns
against using "horizontal" and "vertical" in the name.
How about using the axes in the naming? i.e. inline-align-*
and stacking-align-* (the latter could just be align-*).

I also find "-inside" and "-outside" unintuitive. self/content
sounds the most straightforward to me. inside/outside can mean
a number of different things (align the element based on the
outside? Align what's outside the element? Something else?)
but self/content are not as prone to misinterpretation. Of
course, introducing more inside/outside pairs in CSS helps,
by forming a convention, but it does not change the fact that
it's incomprehensible without that convention, which needs to
be learned.

However, opinions (even justified ones) are pointless when the
problem is basically a usability issue (naming is to languages/
APIs what UI is to applications). You need to conduct some sort
of usability test [...]

fantasai:

I think I'm leaning towards [Set 4] myself, since it seems to fit
reasonably well with the flexbox model:

Set on flex container:
  align-content   - to set distribution of flex lines 
  justify-content - to set distribution of items in each flex line
  align-items     - to set (default) cross-position of items
Set on flex item:
  align-self      - to set individual cross-position of item

Remy:

If you want to keep consistency with other CSS properties (border,
background-position, ...) the axis should be at the end of the
property name and there should be a shorthand to modify both axises. 

Conclusions

  • People seem to be leaning towards the inverted variants.
  • A few people like “box”, but several others think it's overloaded.
  • There seems to be general agreement that 'items' is better than 'default' (or the previous alternative, 'child').
  • There are concerns about the 'inside'/'outside' pair being too cryptic or too confusable, and lacking parallel with 'items'.
  • Some concern over align vs. justify being unmemorable and undescriptive.
 
topics/alignment-names.txt · Last modified: 2014/12/09 15:48 by 127.0.0.1
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