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Still, it doesn’t make sense why US law makes it necessary to have this feature, but any other business or design requirement wouldn’t make this feature necessa

Still, it doesn’t make sense why US law makes it necessary to have this feature, but any other business or design requirement wouldn’t make this feature necessary. Surely if the CEO or designer says “this text must be 24px” that’s not any different from the implementer’s perspective as a law which says the same thing. This whole thing doesn’t really add up.

amalcon 5y ago
It's different from the implementer's perspective because the implementer can go back to the CEO (maybe indirectly) saying "I can make that work 80% of the time, but it just can't be done for the 20% of users who have expressed a preference to the contrary". In your example the CEO gets the option to say "OK, make it work most of the time". In a compliance situation, the CEO is legally obligated to can the whole project, find someone willing to put the text in a JPEG with the attendant accessibility issues, or some other draconian maneuver.
- gowld 5y ago
  If you send me a government mandated form, and I scrible on it, you aren't liable for anything. The only potential concern is if the content is deployed through a framework like Wordpress that might add CSS.
cosmie 5y ago
> This whole thing doesn’t really add up. If the originally purported intent had carried through to the specifications, it adds up in a sense. If !important overrides indicated an explicitly set formatting/sizing for compliance/legal reasons, implementers touching it without any historical context would know at a glance what it signified and that it shouldn't be touched lightly without explicit approval. And when the implementer updates the stylesheets to use 24px text on a page based on direction from the CEO/designer and the element with an !important override stays at 26px, the implementer can point to the !important override as the cause and confirm if the person requesting the change has confirmed legal/compliance approval to change that one as well. Even if the parties involved in the change (the designer, CEO, or implementer) aren't familiar with the compliance reason for the override's origins, the fact that it's there is a known flag that changes can lead to potential violations and costs/fines and need to be properly vetted for approval. It would also make it easier to go in and update the stylesheets to comply with changes in compliance/legal requirements, as you can easily search through the styles for !important flags and find all the spots that need reviewed for potential change needs. That said, its use in practice is completely different than this purported rationale for the flag's existence, and !important is sprinkled so cavalierly in existing codebases to crudely but effectively get a desired effect that the above situation is impossible at this point and the original rationale is moot.

amalcon 5y ago

It's different from the implementer's perspective because the implementer can go back to the CEO (maybe indirectly) saying "I can make that work 80% of the time, but it just can't be done for the 20% of users who have expressed a preference to the contrary". In your example the CEO gets the option to say "OK, make it work most of the time". In a compliance situation, the CEO is legally obligated to can the whole project, find someone willing to put the text in a JPEG with the attendant accessibility issues, or some other draconian maneuver.

gowld 5y ago
If you send me a government mandated form, and I scrible on it, you aren't liable for anything. The only potential concern is if the content is deployed through a framework like Wordpress that might add CSS.

cosmie 5y ago

> This whole thing doesn’t really add up. If the originally purported intent had carried through to the specifications, it adds up in a sense. If !important overrides indicated an explicitly set formatting/sizing for compliance/legal reasons, implementers touching it without any historical context would know at a glance what it signified and that it shouldn't be touched lightly without explicit approval. And when the implementer updates the stylesheets to use 24px text on a page based on direction from the CEO/designer and the element with an !important override stays at 26px, the implementer can point to the !important override as the cause and confirm if the person requesting the change has confirmed legal/compliance approval to change that one as well. Even if the parties involved in the change (the designer, CEO, or implementer) aren't familiar with the compliance reason for the override's origins, the fact that it's there is a known flag that changes can lead to potential violations and costs/fines and need to be properly vetted for approval. It would also make it easier to go in and update the stylesheets to comply with changes in compliance/legal requirements, as you can easily search through the styles for !important flags and find all the spots that need reviewed for potential change needs. That said, its use in practice is completely different than this purported rationale for the flag's existence, and !important is sprinkled so cavalierly in existing codebases to crudely but effectively get a desired effect that the above situation is impossible at this point and the original rationale is moot.