CSS now has an if() conditional function • Hacker News Board

Re: CSS now has an if() conditional function

#81

Post by _jzlw » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 10:39 AM UTC

Aardwolf wrote: post #68

Can it already vertically and horizontally center unknown-beforehand-length multi-line text in a single html element, just like non-CSS table cells could already in 1995?

align-content: center;

(supported on block elements since sometime last year)

Re: CSS now has an if() conditional function

#82

Post by marcinignac » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 10:40 AM UTC

Proposed title change "Chrome now has an if() conditional function in CSS"

Re: CSS now has an if() conditional function

#83

Post by phplovesong » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 10:41 AM UTC

Now we just need a while loop to make it turing complete.

Re: CSS now has an if() conditional function

#84

Post by lucideer » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 10:50 AM UTC

zkmon wrote: post #42

Give it enough time, every declarative language becomes a programming language. This is happening with all config files, markup languages, data formats. The distinction between code, config and data is being erased. Everything is a soup now. Data is application, configuration is code. Code is an intermediate, volatile thing that is generated on the fly and executed in the temporary lambda containers.

You have to give it to CSS, it's held out for a lot longer than most.

Re: CSS now has an if() conditional function

#85

Post by qwertytyyuu » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 11:05 AM UTC

oh no, this is going to cause abomninations,

Re: CSS now has an if() conditional function

#86

Post by debugnik » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 11:07 AM UTC

spooky_deep wrote: post #78

Derbasti wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Visual Studio project files are XML files that are interpreted line by line, and can contain variables, branches, and loops. Hell on earth.

Horrible. Would’ve been much nicer if they’d reached for Scheme.

You say that, but people in OCaml keep bemoaning the use of mostly declarative s-expressions in the Dune build system. Imagine the reaction if MSBuild used an actual Scheme.

Re: CSS now has an if() conditional function

#87

Post by noelwelsh » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 11:13 AM UTC

mseepgood wrote: post #66

zkmon wrote: post #42

Give it enough time, every declarative language becomes a programming language. This is happening with all config files, markup languages, data formats. The distinction between code, config and data is being erased. Everything is a soup now. Data is application, configuration is code. Code is an intermediate, volatile thing that is generated on the fly and executed in the temporary lambda containers.

So why do people still design declarative languages?

OP is not being very precise (and in a way that I don't think is helpful). There is nothing imperative in an if expression. Declarative languages can be Turing complete. Declarative languages are a subset of programming languages.

Re: CSS now has an if() conditional function

#88

Post by neuralkoi » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 11:24 AM UTC

Quick, someone get DOOM running on CSS!

Re: CSS now has an if() conditional function

#89

Post by dotancohen » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 11:24 AM UTC

spooky_deep wrote: post #76

alexdns wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. You need at least 2 ifs.

You need unbounded recursion no?

That's actually what two ifs could be.

Re: CSS now has an if() conditional function

#90

Post by JimDabell » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 11:25 AM UTC

jeroenhd wrote: post #79

nottorp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replying to myself (hey, I like myself and I'd like to have a conversation with me): CSS doesn't have it right? Just Chrome. Considering how all kinds of "experts" have started to make web sites that only work fine in Chrome [1], this is not exactly a useful new feature, more like embrace and extend... [1] Orange Romania, when will I be able to download my invoices again in Firefox?

It's in the draft spec for the CSS Values and Units Module Level 5 ( https://drafts.csswg.org/css-values-5/#if-notation ) I don't see Mozilla's or WebKit's positions anywhere, so this is a Chromium-only feature for now.