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Is there too much CSS now?

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Re: Is there too much CSS now?

#91

Post by swagasaurus-rex »

nathias wrote: post #70
ericmcer wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you find element placement to be a one and done solution in regards to using grid, flex or table? Or do each have their own use cases? I tend to default to flex for most things because I am very comfortable with it. I guess I find keeping all the css properties in my head for all the different placement solutions cumbersome, flex and especially grid have a huge amount of functionality and custom properties, and I…

flex everything, it behaves much smoother

I've struggled with children sizing in flex. Children take up more space depending on their content. If the content overflows, flex doesn't handle that well either.

Grid seems to handle this better when you specify grid-template-column.

Anybody know a good flex-specific solution?

Re: Is there too much CSS now?

#92

Post by tannhaeuser »

1. CSS should've been split into app-y styles and doc-y styles a looong time ago; meaning that when you need JavaScript to make use of a feature anyway, there's no point in using CSS and it's better to set styles, layout using JavaScript rather than bloat CSS. The Houdini API was on the right track years ago.

2. The CSS WG at W3C must deliver formal specification rather than the prose they're writing up now. For an idea how a (partial) formal spec for CSS rendering looks like, see eg. [1], [2] (with limitations).

The one way complexity that both W3C and WHATWG have delivered over the past 15 years with complete lack of mental discipline due to financial dependency/job security will be a major source of confusion for generations to come, and will not be looked at favorably.

[1]: https://github.com/uwplse/cassius

[2]: https://github.com/lmeyerov/sc

Re: Is there too much CSS now?

#93

Post by alwillis »

autoexec wrote: post #87
DerekBickerton wrote: post #10

CSS has become like a scripting language now. You can do things like nested CSS[0], keyframe animations[1], calc operations[2], etc It has become very JavaScript-like and this is why I always try to see if I can do something in CSS first before I resort to JS. [0] https://www.w3.org/TR/css-nesting-1/ [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@keyframes [2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/c…

I already want an add-on that allows me to disable certain CSS features just like I block JS by default. It's becoming a problem for sure.

I already want an add-on that allows me to disable certain CSS features just like I block JS by default. It's becoming a problem for sure.

You’ve pretty much always been able to do this via user style sheets [1], which override author (the author of the website you’re viewing) stylesheets.

[1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Cascade#use...

Re: Is there too much CSS now?

#95

Post by pessimizer »

jancsika wrote: post #51
jhp123 wrote: post #28

there's a very old argument in computer science between minimal standards and "batteries included" standards — RISC vs CISC, C vs C++, scheme vs common lisp, Algol W vs Algol 68 etc. The web community, for whatever reason, is firmly in the "batteries included" camp. CSS alone is approaching the number of built-in symbols as a "big" language like common lisp or Perl. New features are always loudly celebrated, even if…

> Personally I think we need a "scheme" for the web Yes! And since it's the web, perhaps put some training wheels for newcomers: easy global variables, more familiar syntax... let me time-travel and see how it goes: time travels Sorry, turns out those training wheels were a bad idea! Other than that, please open up your devTools console and tell me: what do you think? :)

Is Scheme known for its training wheels?

Re: Is there too much CSS now?

#96

Post by autoexec »

alwillis wrote: post #93
autoexec wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already want an add-on that allows me to disable certain CSS features just like I block JS by default. It's becoming a problem for sure.

I already want an add-on that allows me to disable certain CSS features just like I block JS by default. It's becoming a problem for sure. You’ve pretty much always been able to do this via user style sheets [1], which override author (the author of the website you’re viewing) stylesheets. [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Cascade#use...

What I'm missing is a sane set of defaults applied to every page automatically with a nice UI so I can enable specific features on a per-domain basis with a couple clicks. If I get the time I'll write the firefox add-on myself, but in the meantime I'm hoping someone else will save me the trouble

Re: Is there too much CSS now?

#97

Post by SadWebDeveloper »

This is half-empty vs half-full glass of water problem... let me explain.

CSS is bloated because it needs to be bloated, do you remember the days before CSS? no, well we use to relay a lot from the HTML Spec (thats why some ppl kept pushing for some weird things like xhtml), we had to put in the all the elements HTML all the styles for every element on the website (and it wasn't like today that you put style tag and of you go), we had specific pourpose html elements (marquee, center, etc) to do certain things and it was a mess, as soon as CSS was available every developer started demanding it, Microsoft/IE couldn't keep up with the other browsers so he delivered a half-assed implementation (because they were pushing for activex/com shenanigans), that's were the infamous "css hacks" were born, because every major browser were luring users with features that devs had to support if their website aimed to be worldwide accessible, m so old for this shit that i remember Opera being loud on the ACID thing, it even went to my school to promote the CSS level support.

Now lets get back to 2022, all browsers politically agree to implement the things everyone wants, there are still half-assed solutions and workarounds (for older browser support, mainly Sucksfari), but the browser wars are over the winner was webkit=>chromium, now we live in the post war era, nobody wants to touch anything old because it might break the internet (and start another browser support war), so they keep pushing for new things build on top of old things (thats why we have a confusing state of what is better flex vs grid or the fact that we still need a css reset) because some old website (facebook, google, microsoft, etc.) has a vote on the w3c/whatwg table.

The solution? you might not like... lets break the internet, start deprecating the things and start promoting the new ones. Lets get rid of Safari!

Re: Is there too much CSS now?

#98

Post by jakub_jo »

zero_shift wrote: post #49
Julesman wrote: post #11

This take is a disaster. So we get a decade of bloated frameworks to compensate for missing properties and then just when browsers are about to catch up and make all that cruft pointless we get people complaining about it. This isn't a thing. This is some software engineer edgelording. Yeah, we get it, you don't like CSS because you aren't good at it. Just stop.

> This is some software engineer edgelording. This is Chris Coyier , who launched css-tricks back in 2007 and codepen in 2012. He's worked in this field for over 15 years and is one of the most recognisable figures in the webdev community.

No, it's not Chris Coyier.

Re: Is there too much CSS now?

#99

Post by jakub_jo »

Julesman wrote: post #11

This take is a disaster. So we get a decade of bloated frameworks to compensate for missing properties and then just when browsers are about to catch up and make all that cruft pointless we get people complaining about it. This isn't a thing. This is some software engineer edgelording. Yeah, we get it, you don't like CSS because you aren't good at it. Just stop.

You're somewhat right. I either don't like the attitude of the whole article.

Re: Is there too much CSS now?

#100

Post by jancsika »

pessimizer wrote: post #95
jancsika wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally I think we need a "scheme" for the web Yes! And since it's the web, perhaps put some training wheels for newcomers: easy global variables, more familiar syntax... let me time-travel and see how it goes: time travels Sorry, turns out those training wheels were a bad idea! Other than that, please open up your devTools console and tell me: what do you think? :)

Is Scheme known for its training wheels?

I meant that Brendan Eich took something like Scheme and put the training wheels of automatic globals and familiar syntax on it.
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