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I wish CSS was client-side only — a means for a user to decide what fonts, colors, and spacing to use. I do this, with great care, for terminal apps. Is it too

by ibiza 5y ago

I wish CSS was client-side only — a means for a user to decide what fonts, colors, and spacing to use. I do this, with great care, for terminal apps. Is it too much to ask for web apps? Why does every site need to guess my preferences for these important properties?

zamadatix 5y ago
That's a great system for text only content, not dynamic mixed content. There is no magic "line spacing" variable when not every line is meant to be part of a block of text. CSS actually used to have a bunch of system colors and fonts and so on but by far the most popular use was fake virus adverts. Nobody wanted to make a webpage that didn't know what system it was going to be opened on assume the styling of that system as it would immediately clash (and possibly be unreadable). To some extent this problem even occurs in terminals with TUI and/or color enabled apps. The focus on being a block of text output makes it reasonably possible to fix. Most people don't use/want the web to just serve blocks of text, there are other protocols and tools that do that much better anyways.
johnday 5y ago
> Why does every site need to guess my preferences for these important properties? You are more than welcome to create a browser extension which disables all externally rendered CSS. Of course, even the semantic-html-centric would look like garbage, because what is "appropriate" for one site would look absurd on another.
- ibiza 5y ago
  A fair point, although wasn't there a thread on text-only news sites just today? Perhaps they wouldn't look like garbage. I realize I'm arguing from a semantic-html world, now long lost. However, we _are_ left w/ a situation where straight text is rendered poorly (style du jour & out the control of the user), alongside user interface components that are a huge step backwards from prior models. Maybe in another few decades we'll sort out this pickle.
oldstrangers 5y ago
This is a bizarre line of thinking. "Why does design exist? The world should look how I want it to look, there is no need for deviation from that."
dbbk 5y ago
You have the ability to override site CSS with your own with extensions.

by ibiza 5y ago

zamadatix 5y ago

That's a great system for text only content, not dynamic mixed content. There is no magic "line spacing" variable when not every line is meant to be part of a block of text. CSS actually used to have a bunch of system colors and fonts and so on but by far the most popular use was fake virus adverts. Nobody wanted to make a webpage that didn't know what system it was going to be opened on assume the styling of that system as it would immediately clash (and possibly be unreadable). To some extent this problem even occurs in terminals with TUI and/or color enabled apps. The focus on being a block of text output makes it reasonably possible to fix. Most people don't use/want the web to just serve blocks of text, there are other protocols and tools that do that much better anyways.

johnday 5y ago

> Why does every site need to guess my preferences for these important properties? You are more than welcome to create a browser extension which disables all externally rendered CSS. Of course, even the semantic-html-centric would look like garbage, because what is "appropriate" for one site would look absurd on another.

ibiza 5y ago
A fair point, although wasn't there a thread on text-only news sites just today? Perhaps they wouldn't look like garbage. I realize I'm arguing from a semantic-html world, now long lost. However, we _are_ left w/ a situation where straight text is rendered poorly (style du jour & out the control of the user), alongside user interface components that are a huge step backwards from prior models. Maybe in another few decades we'll sort out this pickle.

oldstrangers 5y ago

This is a bizarre line of thinking. "Why does design exist? The world should look how I want it to look, there is no need for deviation from that."

dbbk 5y ago

You have the ability to override site CSS with your own with extensions.