What's new in CSS4 • Hacker News Board

Re: What's new in CSS4

#21

Post by StrawberryFrog » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 12:04 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #16

StrawberryFrog wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the ms-grids and the multicolumn layouts in CSS4? It doesn't look like it from that draft. Are they just free-floating proposals at this stage?

The reality is that there's no such thing as CSS4, and no such thing as CSS3 either: starting with CSS3 the spec was "modularized", meaning it was broken up in a bunch of separate and mostly-independent "modules", which are grouped in a "level" but are specified on their own[0]. So the situation is that TFA talks not about CSS4 but about "Level 4 Selectors" (a draft), talking about "CSS4" is language abuse. The specs…

In summary: no, they're in CSS3; but it's all modular and might not be implemented at the same time.

There is incentive for MS Grids to go forward soon, they're important to MS for use in Windows 8.

Also, they're cool, or rather they're a sane layout scheme and it's awful that CSS hasn't had one up to now.

The irony is that Firefox and Chrome will implement them at about the same time that they become official. But we won't be able to use them widely until IE7,8 and 9 have faded from the web. MS giveth, MS taketh away.

Re: What's new in CSS4

#22

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 12:09 PM UTC

alexchamberlain wrote: post #13

masklinn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why require adding a fiddly and complex toolchain making ramp up and usage of these features more complex than it has to be, and harder to troubleshoot, when it's something making production easier to maintain in the long run? Because unless you suggest adding source maps to CSS (even though they still are not in JS), a preprocessor generating CSS makes CSS far more annoying to debug or play around with than native c…

I wouldn't mind a Chrome/Firefox extension to play around with extended CSS, but in production, I'm on the side of higher performance in Web Browser, which comes from simple style syntax.

[deleted]

Re: What's new in CSS4

#23

Post by masklinn » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 12:13 PM UTC

StrawberryFrog wrote: post #21

masklinn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is that there's no such thing as CSS4, and no such thing as CSS3 either: starting with CSS3 the spec was "modularized", meaning it was broken up in a bunch of separate and mostly-independent "modules", which are grouped in a "level" but are specified on their own[0]. So the situation is that TFA talks not about CSS4 but about "Level 4 Selectors" (a draft), talking about "CSS4" is language abuse. The specs…

In summary: no, they're in CSS3; but it's all modular and might not be implemented at the same time. There is incentive for MS Grids to go forward soon, they're important to MS for use in Windows 8. Also, they're cool, or rather they're a sane layout scheme and it's awful that CSS hasn't had one up to now. The irony is that Firefox and Chrome will implement them at about the same time that they become official. But w…

> In summary: no, they're in CSS3

No. In summary, the question itself does not make sense, it's like asking if the sun tastes better than communism.

Re: What's new in CSS4

#24

Post by StrawberryFrog » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 12:31 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #23

StrawberryFrog wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In summary: no, they're in CSS3; but it's all modular and might not be implemented at the same time. There is incentive for MS Grids to go forward soon, they're important to MS for use in Windows 8. Also, they're cool, or rather they're a sane layout scheme and it's awful that CSS hasn't had one up to now. The irony is that Firefox and Chrome will implement them at about the same time that they become official. But w…

> In summary: no, they're in CSS3 No. In summary, the question itself does not make sense, it's like asking if the sun tastes better than communism.

That's not quite right though; there is a CSS level 3 and these specs are in it.

Re: What's new in CSS4

#25

Post by romaniv » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 12:43 PM UTC

dhx wrote: post #6

chime wrote: post #4

Parent selector is cool but I've needed it at most 2-3% of the time when designing a site. As of now, it doesn't appear to support things I really need in almost all mid-large site layouts: variables, mixins/functions, operations, and namespaces. This means even 5 years from now, I'll need http://lesscss.org/ because browsers with CSS4 won't support variables. How does one go about suggesting to W3C that they should…

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3162221 (which links to through to a www-style list discussion from October 24: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0699.h... )

This is definitely better than no variables, but is it the best solution? I think most of the advantages of variables can be achieved through a technique that introduces no new syntax and a minimum of new keywords:

  .element {
	color: #06c;
	border-color: #006;
  }

  h1 {
	apply: .element;
	border-style: thick;
	border-width: solid;
  }

This will make H1 "pretend" that it has .element class applied to it, even though in HTML source code it doesn't. I think it's a conceptually simple and orthogonal solution. True variables differ from the current metality of CSS way too much.

Re: What's new in CSS4

#26

Post by eljaco » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 3:38 PM UTC

romaniv wrote: post #25

dhx wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3162221 (which links to through to a www-style list discussion from October 24: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0699.h... )

This is definitely better than no variables, but is it the best solution? I think most of the advantages of variables can be achieved through a technique that introduces no new syntax and a minimum of new keywords: .element { color: #06c; border-color: #006; } h1 { apply: .element; border-style: thick; border-width: solid; } This will make H1 "pretend" that it has .element class applied to it, even though in HTML sou…

+1 - I love this idea; some/most times it's easier to change the CSS instead of the HTML/template.

Re: What's new in CSS4

#27

Post by michaelchisari » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 3:57 PM UTC

romaniv wrote: post #25

dhx wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3162221 (which links to through to a www-style list discussion from October 24: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0699.h... )

This is definitely better than no variables, but is it the best solution? I think most of the advantages of variables can be achieved through a technique that introduces no new syntax and a minimum of new keywords: .element { color: #06c; border-color: #006; } h1 { apply: .element; border-style: thick; border-width: solid; } This will make H1 "pretend" that it has .element class applied to it, even though in HTML sou…

Wow, that's actually pretty brilliant, and doesn't feel like you're forcing CSS to act like a programming language.

Re: What's new in CSS4

#28

Post by Chris_Newton » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 4:19 PM UTC

robin_reala wrote: post #14

hpaavola wrote: post #3

I don't need new selectors, I need a way to specify layouts. You know, to do the same things as tables did back in the days, but without all the ugliness.

display:table / display:table-row / display:table-cell ?

One problem with that idea is that tools like CSS tables still have some dependency on the source order in the HTML. So do certain other popular tools, notably various aspects of float positioning.

If we're going to have a proper separation of content from presentation, such that we can do things like alternative layouts for responsive design or A/B testing using only the presentation layer, there has to be a viable mechanism for overriding that sort of source-order dependency.

Re: What's new in CSS4

#29

Post by huckfinnaafb » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 5:22 PM UTC

romaniv wrote: post #25

dhx wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3162221 (which links to through to a www-style list discussion from October 24: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Oct/0699.h... )

This is definitely better than no variables, but is it the best solution? I think most of the advantages of variables can be achieved through a technique that introduces no new syntax and a minimum of new keywords: .element { color: #06c; border-color: #006; } h1 { apply: .element; border-style: thick; border-width: solid; } This will make H1 "pretend" that it has .element class applied to it, even though in HTML sou…

I'm torn on this. Inheritance already exists through assigning multiple classes and the cascade, and now it's impossible to use a "child" class without dragging its parent along with it unless you override "apply" inline.

Not terribly clear as to why we need specific functionality for inheritance when we already have an expressive way of defining it.

Re: What's new in CSS4

#30

Post by tmcw » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 5:41 PM UTC

chime wrote: post #4

Parent selector is cool but I've needed it at most 2-3% of the time when designing a site. As of now, it doesn't appear to support things I really need in almost all mid-large site layouts: variables, mixins/functions, operations, and namespaces. This means even 5 years from now, I'll need http://lesscss.org/ because browsers with CSS4 won't support variables. How does one go about suggesting to W3C that they should…

LESS is great stuff, but CSS should be a minimal, not maximal standard. It is the common divisor, not the maximum, most perfect thing.