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Old dogs, new CSS tricks

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Re: Old dogs, new CSS tricks

#61

Post by the_other »

rafark wrote: post #13

> I can’t use [feature X], I need to support [old browser]. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. As I commented a few days ago, nowadays devs don’t seem to care too much about backwards compatibility. I like to hold onto my devices longer than most people and it’s a bit frustrating to see that most sites nowadays expect you to be in the latest and greatest. It didn’t use to be like this.

In my team, we write software for TVs and set-top boxes, as well as modern browsers. TVs don’t get the ipdate support we’re used to on desktop and mobile. The same codebase has to support Safari 6-era webkit as well as contemporary Blink. We still can’t use some of the flex spec let alone the new hotness.

Re: Old dogs, new CSS tricks

#62

Post by 6510 »

yurishimo wrote: post #58
6510 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One cant update an iphone if there is insufficient free storage, they may have very limited storage and there is no good way to manually move photos and videos to windows over usb or from icloud. People then end up deleting media one by one by hand while taking new pictures and making new videos. It can take a very long time. Most pictures are/feel more valuable than the update.

Totally. The phone problem I think is unavoidable for a large enough organization. At a certain size of company, with enough users, you just have to accept that your tech stack will lag behind for a few years, OR, you're going to spend an extraordinary amount of dev time building backwards compatibility for less capable devices. I find it silly how some people tack on "just ship a fallback stylesheet" as a legitimate…

I just don't use any of the new features until someone complaints about it. If support is there and it doesn't make it impossible to reason about ill adopt it and thank them.

   @container style(color: green) and style(background-color: transparent),
    not style(background-color: red),
    style(--themeBackground),
    style(--themeColor: blue) or style(--themeColor: purple),
    (max-width: 100vw) and style(max-width: 600px) {
  /*  */
  }
It is useful as a selector for people. Best not let that guy anywhere near my code.

Re: Old dogs, new CSS tricks

#63

Post by eviks »

nine_k wrote: post #39
eviks wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Software decays much quicker than hardware in a real way, especially with the never ending list of security vulnerabilities found every year. What's the connection to security vulns? How does that impact devs not using "a separate stylesheet to support everyone." or ignoring "progressive enhancement"? Or what's the vulnerability explanation of hasOwn? It seems it mostly decays quicker on some webby platforms that c…

Is there a Chrome LTS channel? Firefox has an LTS version which can be a baseline for features, but which receives security updates at the very least. I don't know about, say, Chrome 80 line that would receive security fixes but not new features. I also think that would be against Google's interests to have such an LTS line, it would decrease the moat between it an other browsers.

Why do you need Chrom LTS to use "a separate stylesheet to support everyone."?

Re: Old dogs, new CSS tricks

#64

Post by PinguTS »

parhamn wrote: post #18
rafark wrote: post #13

> I can’t use [feature X], I need to support [old browser]. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. As I commented a few days ago, nowadays devs don’t seem to care too much about backwards compatibility. I like to hold onto my devices longer than most people and it’s a bit frustrating to see that most sites nowadays expect you to be in the latest and greatest. It didn’t use to be like this.

I'm a bit torn on this when it comes to browsers. We recently had a user email us that our app stopped working for them. After we dug into it it was because their Chromebook was last updated in 2021 and didn't have Object.hasOwn (which a third-party library uses) and it's not even included in most common polyfills either. We fixed it, because I hate these sorts of compatibility issues. Nevertheless, I left a bit conc…

Sometimes you can't even update. I have an iPad that is perfectly fine for browsing. We use it mainly for TV purposes. It doesn't get any updates anymore.

Now, some streaming services do not work anymore, because the website doesn't work. Why? There is no real technical reason for this. For some streaming services I have a collection of the real streaming URL. That still works fine. The problem is not the streaming itself, it's the website to choose the right stream.

Re: Old dogs, new CSS tricks

#65

Post by Cyberdog »

bruce511 wrote: post #29

>> But take container queries, for example. They were the number one feature requested by front-end devs for a looong time. So why don’t we use them more, now that they’re finally here? A number of things are in play here. 1) when people ask for something it's because they need it now . The client wants it to look like x. Providing it a year later doesn't mean I'll retro-fit it, I'm working for another client now. 2)…

Very good take. CSS is at a point of complexity now where you can't really blame anyone for not knowing everything you can do with it or every new feature that's been adopted in the last couple years, especially for full-stackers like me. I know a lot, including more than enough to get my job done, and though I will still learn new things now and then (I didn't know container queries existed before this article and now that I do I may use them in the future), I'm not in a hurry to learn every new bleeding-edge feature which are probably just going to cause compatibility issues for some non-insignificant number of my clients' browsers (or my clients' clients' browsers) anyway.

Also, as someone who started doing web dev professionally nearly 20 years ago where if it didn't work in IE 6 then you just couldn't use it at all, I just instinctually don't even bother with new (as in 3-4 years old) CSS or JS features most of the time. It's pretty deeply ingrained in me and I suspect many other devs who were around in that time. That said, 5-year-old CSS and JS specs at this point are pretty damn good and you can do a whole lot of cool stuff with them, so this is not nearly as painful now as it was back then.

Good enough is good enough.

Re: Old dogs, new CSS tricks

#66

Post by agos »

gonzo41 wrote: post #49
sir_pepe wrote: post #45

The real problem in my experience is that people who consider themselves to be "real" developers don't care about CSS. I do a ton of code reviews and consulting for companies of all sizes and their JavaScript and TypeScript is almost always at least in a borderline defensible state? But CSS is always one giant file that has been growing since 2002 and is treated as an append-only log of !important. Nobody even tries…

You are not wrong. But my god, the tech debt in any slightly older web app's CSS is bonkers. Even with really well thought out templates you still end up with ~5000 line css files that have all sorts of state and magic in them. And like all tech debt, it's a triage. What I'd really like is more intellisense for css so I could take a css file and get sensible code complete and class suggestions for elements.

you raise a very important point: the tooling around CSS is nothing like we have everywhere else. you can get class completion with Tailwind or CSS Modules (which I prefer), but even basic stuff like CSS Variables or SASS mixins are a black hole

Re: Old dogs, new CSS tricks

#67

Post by emmanueloga_ »

InMice wrote: post #21

Whats the eloquent javascript or think python equivalent for css? is it mdn docs or another? Does anyone know the best active, comprehensive online references? How else do you really keep up on all the crazy new stuff

The state of CSS surveys [1].

--

1: https://stateofcss.com/en-US

Re: Old dogs, new CSS tricks

#68

Post by onion2k »

rafark wrote: post #13

> I can’t use [feature X], I need to support [old browser]. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. As I commented a few days ago, nowadays devs don’t seem to care too much about backwards compatibility. I like to hold onto my devices longer than most people and it’s a bit frustrating to see that most sites nowadays expect you to be in the latest and greatest. It didn’t use to be like this.

"I can’t use [feature X], I need to support [old browser]."

Any time someone says this it's important to add a caveat of "and I want my site to look the same everywhere". Using @supports means you can feature detect what CSS the user's browser supports and enhance where possible. A user with an older browser might see a less pretty, simpler design with somewhat worse UX, but that's often ok if it's a tiny minority and you can give the users on new browsers a much better experience. The two versions might look a bit different but that's fine.

Re: Old dogs, new CSS tricks

#69

Post by JimDabell »

eviks wrote: post #31
parhamn wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit torn on this when it comes to browsers. We recently had a user email us that our app stopped working for them. After we dug into it it was because their Chromebook was last updated in 2021 and didn't have Object.hasOwn (which a third-party library uses) and it's not even included in most common polyfills either. We fixed it, because I hate these sorts of compatibility issues. Nevertheless, I left a bit conc…

> Software decays much quicker than hardware in a real way, especially with the never ending list of security vulnerabilities found every year. What's the connection to security vulns? How does that impact devs not using "a separate stylesheet to support everyone." or ignoring "progressive enhancement"? Or what's the vulnerability explanation of hasOwn? It seems it mostly decays quicker on some webby platforms that c…

Security vulnerabilities are found in browsers.

Browsers are updated to fix the security vulnerabilities.

People upgrade to the latest version to get the security fixes.

If a person is using a browser that is years out of date, they are subject to a lot of security vulnerabilities in a piece of software that is constantly exposed to untrusted code.

Using an old browser is unsafe. If you encounter people using old browsers, you should strongly encourage them to do whatever they can to update their browser for their own good. If they do this, a nice side-effect is that you don’t have to support their older browser version.

Re: Old dogs, new CSS tricks

#70

Post by eviks »

JimDabell wrote: post #69
eviks wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Software decays much quicker than hardware in a real way, especially with the never ending list of security vulnerabilities found every year. What's the connection to security vulns? How does that impact devs not using "a separate stylesheet to support everyone." or ignoring "progressive enhancement"? Or what's the vulnerability explanation of hasOwn? It seems it mostly decays quicker on some webby platforms that c…

Security vulnerabilities are found in browsers. Browsers are updated to fix the security vulnerabilities. People upgrade to the latest version to get the security fixes. If a person is using a browser that is years out of date, they are subject to a lot of security vulnerabilities in a piece of software that is constantly exposed to untrusted code. Using an old browser is unsafe. If you encounter people using old bro…

Yours is s PSA for updating browsers, but this doesn't explain breaking backwards compatibility since newer browsers with security updates don't break older CSS features.
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