3 ms·

No, the real problem is that CSS (as it currently exists) has no means for abstraction. These approaches solve that. Take an analogy: in the not too distant pa

No, the real problem is that CSS (as it currently exists) has no means for abstraction. These approaches solve that. Take an analogy: in the not too distant past, some microprocessors had divide instructions, others did not, but you didn't see people bracketing division instructions with platform-specific conditionals. For the most part no one cared because if you wrote "x / y" in your code, that was merely an abstraction that some compiler would break down into a series of shifts and adds or a divide, depending on the platform.

zalew 15y ago
If less & co would automatically abstract css vendor-specific features just like Jquery abstracts javascript DOM access methods, you'd be right, but as far as I can see on the main page http://lesscss.org/ http://lesscss.org/ you still have to declare it by hand, so it doesn't work that way. Using less doesn't make styling widely compatible out of the box. Looks like what we need is less-like frameworks to evolve into cross-platform abstraction layers.
- JeremyBanks 15y ago
  Sass's Compass' CSS3 module "Provides cross browser CSS3 mixins that take advantage of available pre-spec vendor prefixes." http://compass-style.org/reference/compass/css3/ http://compass-style.org/reference/compass/css3/
- jballanc 15y ago
  These tools are just the "compiler" in our analogy. You still need the "libc", which in this case would be something like Compass: http://compass-style.org/ http://compass-style.org/
- tghw 15y ago
  With projects like Compass (http://compass-style.org http://compass-style.org) for SASS/SCSS, those abstraction layers are there. When we made WebPutty (http://webputty.net http://webputty.net) with SCSS support, one of the first and most common questions we got was "can I use Compass", so we added it. It's pretty much the standard for abstractions. Less is not quite there yet, but things like Twitter Bootstrap are well on their way to becoming similar standard abstractions.
  - masklinn 15y ago
    > With projects like Compass (http://compass-style.org http://compass-style.org) for SASS/SCSS, those abstraction layers are there. That's nonsense, those "abstraction layers" are inserted statically during deployment, they don't improve as browsers improve. When Google or Apple adds a proprietary -webkit- property which may never get standardized, Compass has no way to make that property available to all browsers in sites built at the time the property was solely proprietary as browsers gradually implement it (and it gets standardized) over the next years.
    - jballanc 15y ago
      Code that you compiled on a machine 10 years ago is rather unlikely to still run on whatever machine you're using now. That's the way things go. Still, this is CSS's problem, not Compass's. If CSS had better abstraction abilities built in, then you could point your page to a reference set of abstractions that could be updated as browsers improve.
      - masklinn 15y ago
        > Code that you compiled on a machine 10 years ago is rather unlikely to still run on whatever machine you're using now. 1. That's not even true, you should try out windows once in a while 2. We're not talking about local programs. > That's the way things go. No it's not, that's not even a cop-out that's complete, utter and absolute bullshit. Pages from the very origin of the internet back in 1992 still work perfectly fine today: http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/T... You making things which break is not "the way things go", it's you being incompetent, don't try to pass the blame to somebody else... > If CSS had better abstraction abilities built in, then you could point your page to a reference set of abstractions that could be updated as browsers improve. as you're doing here. So now to fix your own personal incompetence there needs to be a centralized authority set which will magically fix your crap as time goes on? How about doing things correctly to start with?
        15y ago

zalew 15y ago

If less & co would automatically abstract css vendor-specific features just like Jquery abstracts javascript DOM access methods, you'd be right, but as far as I can see on the main page http://lesscss.org/ http://lesscss.org/ you still have to declare it by hand, so it doesn't work that way. Using less doesn't make styling widely compatible out of the box. Looks like what we need is less-like frameworks to evolve into cross-platform abstraction layers.

JeremyBanks 15y ago
Sass's Compass' CSS3 module "Provides cross browser CSS3 mixins that take advantage of available pre-spec vendor prefixes." http://compass-style.org/reference/compass/css3/ http://compass-style.org/reference/compass/css3/
jballanc 15y ago
These tools are just the "compiler" in our analogy. You still need the "libc", which in this case would be something like Compass: http://compass-style.org/ http://compass-style.org/
tghw 15y ago
With projects like Compass (http://compass-style.org http://compass-style.org) for SASS/SCSS, those abstraction layers are there. When we made WebPutty (http://webputty.net http://webputty.net) with SCSS support, one of the first and most common questions we got was "can I use Compass", so we added it. It's pretty much the standard for abstractions. Less is not quite there yet, but things like Twitter Bootstrap are well on their way to becoming similar standard abstractions.
- masklinn 15y ago
  > With projects like Compass (http://compass-style.org http://compass-style.org) for SASS/SCSS, those abstraction layers are there. That's nonsense, those "abstraction layers" are inserted statically during deployment, they don't improve as browsers improve. When Google or Apple adds a proprietary -webkit- property which may never get standardized, Compass has no way to make that property available to all browsers in sites built at the time the property was solely proprietary as browsers gradually implement it (and it gets standardized) over the next years.
  - jballanc 15y ago
    Code that you compiled on a machine 10 years ago is rather unlikely to still run on whatever machine you're using now. That's the way things go. Still, this is CSS's problem, not Compass's. If CSS had better abstraction abilities built in, then you could point your page to a reference set of abstractions that could be updated as browsers improve.
    - masklinn 15y ago
      > Code that you compiled on a machine 10 years ago is rather unlikely to still run on whatever machine you're using now. 1. That's not even true, you should try out windows once in a while 2. We're not talking about local programs. > That's the way things go. No it's not, that's not even a cop-out that's complete, utter and absolute bullshit. Pages from the very origin of the internet back in 1992 still work perfectly fine today: http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/T... You making things which break is not "the way things go", it's you being incompetent, don't try to pass the blame to somebody else... > If CSS had better abstraction abilities built in, then you could point your page to a reference set of abstractions that could be updated as browsers improve. as you're doing here. So now to fix your own personal incompetence there needs to be a centralized authority set which will magically fix your crap as time goes on? How about doing things correctly to start with?
      - 15y ago