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W3C Poor Underlining Decision Making - Rewrites Behavior for Hanging Characters
#1
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The W3C has decided to change the default way underlining behavior has worked since its typewriter debut. Why? I have no idea. Maybe it was because of the oddballs from Apple claiming progress (as they did for removing the headphone jack... how embarrassing). If anything, the new underlining style should have been implemented without changing the default behavior so that website owners and their users could have a choice as to which style they'd like to use.

Unfortunately, NO ONE was given a choice. As a website owner or administrator, you might start seeing some weird looking underlined text in Chrome or Safari (the only browsers that have implemented this flawed idea). This is because of the W3C's erroneous spec that has forced this unwanted behavior on the masses. See the draft here:

https://drafts.csswg.org/css-text-decor-...p-property

I'm guessing that most browsers will start rendering links orunderlined text stupidly soon. Again, we have the W3C to blame. Unfortunately, this looks ugly, and breaking up links due to hanging characters is a mistake.

Just take a look at the below images to see the difference.

OLD STYLE (Looks Better than New)

[Image: 280_OiDXrb_old_style_underline_2.jpg]

New Style (Looks Terrible)


[Image: 279_wBx0jL_new_style_underline.jpg]

That's a pretty big change. I prefer the old behavior.

A bug was even filed in Chrome for this behavior change, but it's evidently the way the W3C wants to handle links by default.

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/iss...?id=813256

You can get your underlined text to render the old way by adding additional CSS rules to your stylesheet:

Code:
a, u, .underline{
   text-decoration-skip-ink: none;
}

I hope you have fun changing your style sheets for your carefully constructed websites. As it stands now, your web pages could display in ways never seen before as long as the W3C keeps rewriting and changing standards that have been established for decades.

What do you think? Was it a good idea? I don't think so.

Common sense says you shouldn't change it for everyone after the standard has been set for decades. Oh well. Another reason to hate this insane world.
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#2
Let it be known that I tried to save the internet from the upcoming underlining apocalypse, but unfortunately, few people on the W3C style mailing list seemed to care. In fact, some of them were even arguing in favor of this new styling being the default behavior for underlined text. I tried my best. I really did...

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www.../0063.html

Hopefully they'll reverse their decision soon or else RIP underlining!
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