4 ms·

Stop. Just stop making CSS ever more complicated. It is already waaay to complex. Worse, the standards committee has given up having actual versions - it's just

Stop. Just stop making CSS ever more complicated. It is already waaay to complex. Worse, the standards committee has given up having actual versions - it's just gradually evolving chaos. At this point, honestly, everything after CSS/2 should be thrown away, so we can start again. With an actual standards process, this time.

culi 3y ago
CSS development is no different from people using programming languages. Languages, especially nowadays, are packed with features you've likely never used. Or used very rarely. So you have to do a quick lookup to remember "how do I [XXXXX] again?". CSS is no different. Nobody's making you memorize all the new features. The fundamentals are mostly the same. The only difference is we now have some new solutions for some of these edge cases
- bradley13 3y ago
  The difference is this: a browser must implement basically all of CSS. The complexity of CSS is a major reason that there is so little competition in browser space.
  - culi 3y ago
    This is a fair point but the same is absolutely true for JS. In fact moreso. A JS error makes an entire script fail. CSS fails gracefully. The more CSS you support, the better things work. If you fail to support some JS syntax you break the whole script
- tannhaeuser 3y ago
  If CSS is no different from a programming language, then why tf aren't we using JS for styling already? Instead we're adding to CSS in the course of 25 years without any mental discipline. And also add to JS. CSS was once supposed to be a style language for laymen (including readers!). Citing from the CSS level 1 specification: > This document specifies level 1 of the Cascading Style Sheet mechanism (CSS1). CSS1 is a simple style sheet mechanism that allows authors and readers to attach style (e.g. fonts, colors and spacing) to HTML documents. At the end of the day (or mid-century), newer generations have to maintain the CSS circus, and I don't see that happening. Especially with "web developers" having captured the web for themselves, as you're saying.
  - paradox460 3y ago
    > why tf aren't we using JS for styling already People are and have been for quite a while https://cssinjs.org/ https://cssinjs.org/
  - john_the_writer 3y ago
    Because JS is worse, and doesn't work everywhere css does. I personally like keeping style and business logic bespoke.
  - culi 3y ago
    > If CSS is no different from a programming language, then why tf aren't we using JS for styling already? Instead we're adding to CSS in the course of 25 years without any mental discipline. And also add to JS. People are and you're completely misinterpretting what I'm saying. Obviously there are omnibus ways CSS is not at all similar to a programming language
tannhaeuser 3y ago
We can keep on raising awareness for this serious problem, and it's beginning to show results, at least there's some consideration now when years ago every CSS "invention" was naively cheered at as our web docs became impossible to render unless you kiss the ring of an ad company. We have to be realistic here, though; the ad/spam "industry" has ruined every digital communication medium so far: email, usenet, irc, ... What W3C should be doing IMO is start a formal semantics for CSS. Or alternatively, layer as much as possible on top of a primitive JS rendering or layout plugin API (a la Houdini API), and ship a portable JS layout implementation (for float, table, flex, grid/subgrid, etc. layout) on top of it. We should also call CSS wizardry what it is: a self-serving show off, and a weakness, considering the web was once envisioned as a platform for easy self-publishing.

culi 3y ago

CSS development is no different from people using programming languages. Languages, especially nowadays, are packed with features you've likely never used. Or used very rarely. So you have to do a quick lookup to remember "how do I [XXXXX] again?". CSS is no different. Nobody's making you memorize all the new features. The fundamentals are mostly the same. The only difference is we now have some new solutions for some of these edge cases

bradley13 3y ago
The difference is this: a browser must implement basically all of CSS. The complexity of CSS is a major reason that there is so little competition in browser space.
- culi 3y ago
  This is a fair point but the same is absolutely true for JS. In fact moreso. A JS error makes an entire script fail. CSS fails gracefully. The more CSS you support, the better things work. If you fail to support some JS syntax you break the whole script
tannhaeuser 3y ago
If CSS is no different from a programming language, then why tf aren't we using JS for styling already? Instead we're adding to CSS in the course of 25 years without any mental discipline. And also add to JS. CSS was once supposed to be a style language for laymen (including readers!). Citing from the CSS level 1 specification: > This document specifies level 1 of the Cascading Style Sheet mechanism (CSS1). CSS1 is a simple style sheet mechanism that allows authors and readers to attach style (e.g. fonts, colors and spacing) to HTML documents. At the end of the day (or mid-century), newer generations have to maintain the CSS circus, and I don't see that happening. Especially with "web developers" having captured the web for themselves, as you're saying.
- paradox460 3y ago
  > why tf aren't we using JS for styling already People are and have been for quite a while https://cssinjs.org/ https://cssinjs.org/
- john_the_writer 3y ago
  Because JS is worse, and doesn't work everywhere css does. I personally like keeping style and business logic bespoke.
- culi 3y ago
  > If CSS is no different from a programming language, then why tf aren't we using JS for styling already? Instead we're adding to CSS in the course of 25 years without any mental discipline. And also add to JS. People are and you're completely misinterpretting what I'm saying. Obviously there are omnibus ways CSS is not at all similar to a programming language

tannhaeuser 3y ago

We can keep on raising awareness for this serious problem, and it's beginning to show results, at least there's some consideration now when years ago every CSS "invention" was naively cheered at as our web docs became impossible to render unless you kiss the ring of an ad company. We have to be realistic here, though; the ad/spam "industry" has ruined every digital communication medium so far: email, usenet, irc, ... What W3C should be doing IMO is start a formal semantics for CSS. Or alternatively, layer as much as possible on top of a primitive JS rendering or layout plugin API (a la Houdini API), and ship a portable JS layout implementation (for float, table, flex, grid/subgrid, etc. layout) on top of it. We should also call CSS wizardry what it is: a self-serving show off, and a weakness, considering the web was once envisioned as a platform for easy self-publishing.