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That's why I use CSS in JS :D. But we're just putting abstractions/stopgaps over a fundamentally flawed design. Not to mention, since everybody uses a different

That's why I use CSS in JS :D. But we're just putting abstractions/stopgaps over a fundamentally flawed design. Not to mention, since everybody uses a different standard for isolation, CSS in JS is not compatible with BEM is not compatible with SASS, etc.

ZenPsycho 8y ago
CSS was originally designed with the idea that you would have one css file for your whole site, and it would be maybe 300 lines max. We've obviously gone well off the rails. Selector specificity was supposed to be the scoping mechanism. And it works great in the original envisaged usescase: a single person making a single website. it just doesn't scale to large teams, and ancient software projects, with complicated layouts.
- laumars 8y ago
  It never worked well in the original envisaged usecase. CSS 1 didn’t work properly with tables which meant I used to have to inline style attributes for tables as well as set a CAS file. It’s always been garbage for centering things, in the early days that meant using the <center> tag. Then you have all the different browser extensions (o-, mo-, etc) the inconsistent preferences for font-face, etc. CSS was a great idea but it’s always been a garbage execution of that with no single browser following the spec correctly for years then each browser going off and adding their own crap when the spec ended up languishing (thank you W3C for sleeping while the web leapfrogged into the future). I’m not a fan of HTML (I think that was good for it’s time but could use deprecation) nor JavaScript (but I’ll concede this is personal preference - however wouldn’t it be nice to have browsers run byte code so you could have a choice of languages rather than having compile everything down to JavaScript?) but CSS is easily the worst of a bad bunch in my personal opinion. Frankly I don’t even get why people are defending it. Any programming tool that reduces the developer down to hours of trial and error just to do basic things is clearly a misstep. Sure, expert front end developers with years of experience and using bloated frameworks cope fine; but why have we allowed ourselves to get into this kind of mess in the first place? I would honestly welcome a ground up complete reimplementation of the web if browser vendors all decided to work together on one.
  - dylan604 8y ago
    >I would honestly welcome a ground up complete reimplementation of the web if browser vendors all decided to work together on one. Was that the sound of a pig flying by, or the sound of hell freezing over? Any time specs can be interpreted, there will always be these differences in browsers. Maybe we could not call them specs, and just call them suggestions?
    - laumars 8y ago
      Ostensibly I do agree with you however that is the reason I phrased it "browser vendors working together" rather than "a new spec being written". However, as you said, the chances of that happening are remote. Even putting personal agendas aside (eg Google wanting to control content via AMP), the web in it's current form is "good enough" that there's no real drive to reinvent the wheel for something with such deep market penetration already.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    > wouldn’t it be nice to have browsers run byte code so you could have a choice of languages rather than having compile everything down to JavaScript? How are those two situations different? You're compiling one language to another language. Does it matter if one of them is called "bytecode"?
    - laumars 8y ago
      The Javascript equivalent of byte code would be web assembly and that is still a long way from being ready for primetime.
      - thaumasiotes 8y ago
        The question is, why isn't "the javascript equivalent of bytecode" just javascript? Why do you think there's a difference between "javascript" and "bytecode"?
  - scns 8y ago

ZenPsycho 8y ago

CSS was originally designed with the idea that you would have one css file for your whole site, and it would be maybe 300 lines max. We've obviously gone well off the rails. Selector specificity was supposed to be the scoping mechanism. And it works great in the original envisaged usescase: a single person making a single website. it just doesn't scale to large teams, and ancient software projects, with complicated layouts.

laumars 8y ago
It never worked well in the original envisaged usecase. CSS 1 didn’t work properly with tables which meant I used to have to inline style attributes for tables as well as set a CAS file. It’s always been garbage for centering things, in the early days that meant using the <center> tag. Then you have all the different browser extensions (o-, mo-, etc) the inconsistent preferences for font-face, etc. CSS was a great idea but it’s always been a garbage execution of that with no single browser following the spec correctly for years then each browser going off and adding their own crap when the spec ended up languishing (thank you W3C for sleeping while the web leapfrogged into the future). I’m not a fan of HTML (I think that was good for it’s time but could use deprecation) nor JavaScript (but I’ll concede this is personal preference - however wouldn’t it be nice to have browsers run byte code so you could have a choice of languages rather than having compile everything down to JavaScript?) but CSS is easily the worst of a bad bunch in my personal opinion. Frankly I don’t even get why people are defending it. Any programming tool that reduces the developer down to hours of trial and error just to do basic things is clearly a misstep. Sure, expert front end developers with years of experience and using bloated frameworks cope fine; but why have we allowed ourselves to get into this kind of mess in the first place? I would honestly welcome a ground up complete reimplementation of the web if browser vendors all decided to work together on one.
- dylan604 8y ago
  >I would honestly welcome a ground up complete reimplementation of the web if browser vendors all decided to work together on one. Was that the sound of a pig flying by, or the sound of hell freezing over? Any time specs can be interpreted, there will always be these differences in browsers. Maybe we could not call them specs, and just call them suggestions?
  - laumars 8y ago
    Ostensibly I do agree with you however that is the reason I phrased it "browser vendors working together" rather than "a new spec being written". However, as you said, the chances of that happening are remote. Even putting personal agendas aside (eg Google wanting to control content via AMP), the web in it's current form is "good enough" that there's no real drive to reinvent the wheel for something with such deep market penetration already.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  > wouldn’t it be nice to have browsers run byte code so you could have a choice of languages rather than having compile everything down to JavaScript? How are those two situations different? You're compiling one language to another language. Does it matter if one of them is called "bytecode"?
  - laumars 8y ago
    The Javascript equivalent of byte code would be web assembly and that is still a long way from being ready for primetime.
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      The question is, why isn't "the javascript equivalent of bytecode" just javascript? Why do you think there's a difference between "javascript" and "bytecode"?
- scns 8y ago