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I’ve avoided `display:contents` for years, my rationale being something like “Why bother to get to grips with something that is implemented so badly? I’ll learn when that changes.”

But today I found myself in the murky waters of https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/115961479237114866

and have now had a cursory read of ‘More accessible markup with display: contents’ – https://hidde.blog/more-accessible-markup-with-display-contents/ – by @hdv, so I’m becoming clearer now on *why* MDN are using it… [continues]

Jonathan Schofield

@urlyman@mastodon.social replied · 2 weeks ago

…I presume the key bit is, as @hdv said back in 2018:

“Effectively, using `display: contents` on an element does this: the element stops participating in the grid, and its contents start participating in it. It lets us specify our sponsors onto the grid, instead of the list they are contained in.”

I can see the utility of that. And I accept that baseline support has shifted in the intervening 8 years. I *don’t* know (because I haven’t yet revisited) what the accessibility implications are.…

Jonathan Schofield

@urlyman@mastodon.social replied · 2 weeks ago

…My instinct is that MDN applying it to a `<main>` element has relatively low accessibility ramifications? But honestly I don’t know.

From a high level view, what I *feel* I see is a general fragility emerging out of a fixation with “less than 2.5 years” https://github.com/mdn/fred/issues/662#issuecomment-3236547093.

I can see *why* such a decision gets made. But I don’t like where it takes us.

In any case use of `display:contents` is probably only *part* of the sources of complete layout failure in (not so very) old Safari

Jonathan Schofield

@urlyman@mastodon.social replied · 2 weeks ago

…Coming back to what @hdv could foresee back in 2018:

“With `display: contents`, you can place grand children of a grid container on the grid. This allows for more semantic mark-up, which is great for accessibility. The more meaningful your mark-up, the more detail an assistive technology can provide to its users.”

BUT…

I’m not hugely persuaded of the need. There have been relatively few times when I’ve felt the need to adapt markup *because of* desired layout. And when I have done…

Jonathan Schofield

@urlyman@mastodon.social replied · 2 weeks ago

…I’ve either come up with an alternative but still accessible and semantic markup, or rethought the design approach.

There are remaining frustrations with CSS limits, especially with regard to layout, but tbh they’re not really deal breakers.

I’d much rather we focus on the vital importance of #frugalComputing than incrementing design fetish

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