8 ms·

‘CSS X’

akersten 6y ago
This article is a masterwork in expanding a single sentence ("CSS gets a new conceptual version every few big modules") into an absolute saga. As I was reading through I was worried I was about to read an article about how some big company was going to recreate CSS from the ground up because there's too much cruft or something. A relief!
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  All I could think as I read it was ‘What am I reading here, and should I be terrified?’. I live in fear reading through anything new in the frontend space. Any further developments in this space needs to come full circle with web components. The WASM army have begun marching recently too. The horror! The horror!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- uallo 6y ago
  > "CSS gets a new conceptual version every few big modules" Where in the article does it say anything like that? The article does not present any decision in that regard at all. It summarizes the history of CSS and the discussion about whether or not to (re-)introduce some kind of global CSS versioning. It presents some suggestions and concerns from the community. But it does not introduce anything.
  - akersten 6y ago
    It's the last sentence, which one could be excused for not enduring the rest of the article before reaching: > , a precise definition of ‘CSS X’ isn’t even needed. Every three years of so, some people should pick a couple of interesting new modules that were added in that period and start writing about them, under the heading ‘CSS 4’, then ‘CSS 5’, etc. ‘CSS X’ is defined as those two or so modules, plus whatever was in the previous version and a loosely defined set of other modules. I said "conceptual" because it's just some person's opinion about versioning, and the article does say the CSS working group doesn't really care for versioning at all. Either way, my opinion was that the article is about 95% too long, I'm making no other claims.
benrbray 6y ago
> Leading the web to its full potential Meanwhile, that W3C logo is sporting a radial gradient + inner shadow + drop shadow combination straight out of 2004!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- asdasfasdfasdf 6y ago
  Well, at least you clicked the link... that's further than most people make it before posting inane commentary.
maxharris 6y ago
I used to get really angry at CSS because of all of the things that made it a bad fit with component-based systems like React. It made me so unhappy that I worked full-time for about nine months on this project, which was a React-like component system that rendered to canvas. https://github.com/maxharris9/layout https://github.com/maxharris9/layout I got pretty far! But I gave up working on it when I realized that I was going to be pushing this boulder uphill for years. So what changed? I picked up Swift and SwiftUI, and it turns out that some of the ideas that I had were the same ones the SwiftUI folks went with! For all the web has given us, I think its APIs are holding us back now. I still think we need something open and decentralized that competes with the App store and Play store, but one that offers apps that use basically the same APIs and technology that the native apps use. Last thing: I know Apple cripples browsers on their platforms. I've run into all those issues personally in my work! That still doesn't make the web the right thing. Here's James Mickens telling us how to fix the browser's busted architecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uflg7LDmzI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uflg7LDmzI
- untog 6y ago
  Improvements like web components encapsulating CSS make it a much better fit for component development. Just a shame React doesn’t support the API like other frameworks do.
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    I thought React team was working to support web components?
    - untog 6y ago
      I hadn’t heard that. Very positive development if so.
- filleduchaos 6y ago
  This is part of why it bemuses me to see web developers cling so hard to using HTML/CSS beyond the browser. I'd much sooner tangle with a proper UI SDK designed from the start to support applications than fight with a layout/painting engine that relies on a document model. The sheer inability of CSS to handle dynamic heights should be frustration enough for anyone.
toastal 6y ago
Sure the naming conventions for for versions are arbitary, but there's still a lot of exciting stuff in these pipelines regardless of name. I love how much the definition of "color" has expanded in CSS4. You can query on color gamut range and define your own color spaces. CSS5 is getting color operations based on lch so you don't have the gamma squaring issue that plagues Sass and Less. I like that the direction isn't just to copy these preprocessors but make it better from the start.
lykahb 6y ago
The version was useful when the browsers had incomplete support for CSS. It served as a milestone for browser makers to achieve. They could give a claim of their technological advantage, say 90% of the CSS3 features. Now the CSS progress is more driven by the browsers than the W3C committee. Also, CSS does not affect the competition between browsers as much as before. So, as the flashy tech gets stable and boring, the need to give it marketable names goes away.
kumarvvr 6y ago
I wish there was more done in CSS for generation of print documents. I mean, precise sizing, pixel perfect placement, layouts, etc, that can be printed as PDF pages. I know there are print related media settings, but they seem overly complex and paid libraries have cropped up, which abstract away the complexity, but charge to provide usability. HTML & CSS, conceptually, are world class technologies. Separation of content and styling, theoretically, should be able to display / output documents for a wide variety of targets. However, media queries are based on screen pixel sizes. I don't know if its even possible, but I would love to define media for PDF documents, Word documents, etc.
- scoopertrooper 6y ago
  > However, media queries are based on screen pixel sizes. https://joshuawinn.com/css-print-media-query/ https://joshuawinn.com/css-print-media-query/
- phonon 6y ago
  https://books.idea.whatwg.org/ https://books.idea.whatwg.org/
  - kumarvvr 6y ago
    Thank you for this. First time I have come across this. Looks very interesting.
- _samjarman 6y ago
  Like React-PDF or do you mean something else?
- greggman3 6y ago
  I'm glad there isn't. I wish more people making documents would get that I live on phones, tablets, notebooks, all with screens of varying sizes. I never print unless some government agency requires it and then I curse that my country is backward compared to say Estonia where rumor is everything is online.
- danShumway 6y ago
earthboundkid 6y ago
I think CSS would benefit from having an opt-in system for sane defaults. You can’t do a real project without a reset stylesheet of some sort, but why? They should define CSS4 and provide a script type=module style method for telling the browser to use it.
- jhardy54 6y ago
  CSS has no defaults. The defaults are added by your web browser.
  - earthboundkid 6y ago
    The distinction you are making does not meaningfully impact my proposal.
abhay07 6y ago
Off the topic. I don't see many website using 3d transform feature of CSS. I think it should be explored more. Has much potential.

This article is a masterwork in expanding a single sentence ("CSS gets a new conceptual version every few big modules") into an absolute saga. As I was reading through I was worried I was about to read an article about how some big company was going to recreate CSS from the ground up because there's too much cruft or something. A relief!

runawaybottle 6y ago
All I could think as I read it was ‘What am I reading here, and should I be terrified?’. I live in fear reading through anything new in the frontend space. Any further developments in this space needs to come full circle with web components. The WASM army have begun marching recently too. The horror! The horror!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
uallo 6y ago
> "CSS gets a new conceptual version every few big modules" Where in the article does it say anything like that? The article does not present any decision in that regard at all. It summarizes the history of CSS and the discussion about whether or not to (re-)introduce some kind of global CSS versioning. It presents some suggestions and concerns from the community. But it does not introduce anything.
- akersten 6y ago
  It's the last sentence, which one could be excused for not enduring the rest of the article before reaching: > , a precise definition of ‘CSS X’ isn’t even needed. Every three years of so, some people should pick a couple of interesting new modules that were added in that period and start writing about them, under the heading ‘CSS 4’, then ‘CSS 5’, etc. ‘CSS X’ is defined as those two or so modules, plus whatever was in the previous version and a loosely defined set of other modules. I said "conceptual" because it's just some person's opinion about versioning, and the article does say the CSS working group doesn't really care for versioning at all. Either way, my opinion was that the article is about 95% too long, I'm making no other claims.

benrbray 6y ago

> Leading the web to its full potential Meanwhile, that W3C logo is sporting a radial gradient + inner shadow + drop shadow combination straight out of 2004!

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
asdasfasdfasdf 6y ago
Well, at least you clicked the link... that's further than most people make it before posting inane commentary.

maxharris 6y ago

I used to get really angry at CSS because of all of the things that made it a bad fit with component-based systems like React. It made me so unhappy that I worked full-time for about nine months on this project, which was a React-like component system that rendered to canvas. https://github.com/maxharris9/layout https://github.com/maxharris9/layout I got pretty far! But I gave up working on it when I realized that I was going to be pushing this boulder uphill for years. So what changed? I picked up Swift and SwiftUI, and it turns out that some of the ideas that I had were the same ones the SwiftUI folks went with! For all the web has given us, I think its APIs are holding us back now. I still think we need something open and decentralized that competes with the App store and Play store, but one that offers apps that use basically the same APIs and technology that the native apps use. Last thing: I know Apple cripples browsers on their platforms. I've run into all those issues personally in my work! That still doesn't make the web the right thing. Here's James Mickens telling us how to fix the browser's busted architecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uflg7LDmzI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uflg7LDmzI

untog 6y ago
Improvements like web components encapsulating CSS make it a much better fit for component development. Just a shame React doesn’t support the API like other frameworks do.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  I thought React team was working to support web components?
  - untog 6y ago
    I hadn’t heard that. Very positive development if so.
filleduchaos 6y ago
This is part of why it bemuses me to see web developers cling so hard to using HTML/CSS beyond the browser. I'd much sooner tangle with a proper UI SDK designed from the start to support applications than fight with a layout/painting engine that relies on a document model. The sheer inability of CSS to handle dynamic heights should be frustration enough for anyone.

toastal 6y ago

Sure the naming conventions for for versions are arbitary, but there's still a lot of exciting stuff in these pipelines regardless of name. I love how much the definition of "color" has expanded in CSS4. You can query on color gamut range and define your own color spaces. CSS5 is getting color operations based on lch so you don't have the gamma squaring issue that plagues Sass and Less. I like that the direction isn't just to copy these preprocessors but make it better from the start.

lykahb 6y ago

The version was useful when the browsers had incomplete support for CSS. It served as a milestone for browser makers to achieve. They could give a claim of their technological advantage, say 90% of the CSS3 features. Now the CSS progress is more driven by the browsers than the W3C committee. Also, CSS does not affect the competition between browsers as much as before. So, as the flashy tech gets stable and boring, the need to give it marketable names goes away.

kumarvvr 6y ago

I wish there was more done in CSS for generation of print documents. I mean, precise sizing, pixel perfect placement, layouts, etc, that can be printed as PDF pages. I know there are print related media settings, but they seem overly complex and paid libraries have cropped up, which abstract away the complexity, but charge to provide usability. HTML & CSS, conceptually, are world class technologies. Separation of content and styling, theoretically, should be able to display / output documents for a wide variety of targets. However, media queries are based on screen pixel sizes. I don't know if its even possible, but I would love to define media for PDF documents, Word documents, etc.

scoopertrooper 6y ago
> However, media queries are based on screen pixel sizes. https://joshuawinn.com/css-print-media-query/ https://joshuawinn.com/css-print-media-query/
phonon 6y ago
https://books.idea.whatwg.org/ https://books.idea.whatwg.org/
- kumarvvr 6y ago
  Thank you for this. First time I have come across this. Looks very interesting.
_samjarman 6y ago
Like React-PDF or do you mean something else?
greggman3 6y ago
I'm glad there isn't. I wish more people making documents would get that I live on phones, tablets, notebooks, all with screens of varying sizes. I never print unless some government agency requires it and then I curse that my country is backward compared to say Estonia where rumor is everything is online.
danShumway 6y ago

earthboundkid 6y ago

I think CSS would benefit from having an opt-in system for sane defaults. You can’t do a real project without a reset stylesheet of some sort, but why? They should define CSS4 and provide a script type=module style method for telling the browser to use it.

jhardy54 6y ago
CSS has no defaults. The defaults are added by your web browser.
- earthboundkid 6y ago
  The distinction you are making does not meaningfully impact my proposal.

abhay07 6y ago

Off the topic. I don't see many website using 3d transform feature of CSS. I think it should be explored more. Has much potential.