Especially CSS is such a miss fitting technology for what it is used today, that web frameworks actively fight it, by trying to keep its scope to components.
When looked at web tech from a distance, it is cristal clear to me that we need something new.
Instead of all the abysmal complicated rules of CSS, we would probably be much better served by something like ElmUI (a modern advanced version of the idea) + some scripting for dynamic things.
I've done the same for years, and it feels a little bit like the IQ bell curve meme, where on the left and right it is like "vanilla HTML/CSS/JS are all you need."
Smaller bundles, often easier to use, less bug potential. Code's a liability and being able to occasionally rip a bunch out as a feature becomes baseline is always a joy.
Y'all know React and Vue frameworks still use HTML, CSS, and JS, right? We're using the same thing, with a thin layer of helpers around mounting components and managing their lifetimes...
Nesting and @layers make maintaining CSS drastically easier than it once was as well.
I sometimes wish that CSS were reduced to the "good parts" and made simpler through it, but I realize that it's infeasible.
https://youtu.be/0j-Wakm5B84?is=7dU_EvFyk_nQNwjO
It's like a peek into a CSS future from a different timeline. Something we could have had.
Especially functions.
Makes me think of a previous post from the author, who wrote 100k lines-of-code to power their blog.
If you want them now, you have to do sort of verbose and clunky calculations to get outer corner radius.
[Outer Radius = Inner Radius + Padding](https://www.reddit.com/r/Design/s/oal9fZclJS)
This seems like something standard enough to be a built-in feature.
Anchor Positioning would be sweet and doesn't feel like it's got so much baggage.
All browsers at least have partial support. I've been using it.
I spent 3 months this year testing out a reporting system for large quantities of dynamic data.
My requirement was to generate pdf reports, but didn't want any reporting tools and installations. Especially something like Microsoft Excel, which the old system was based on.
After a lot of tests and proof-of-concept apps, I finally zeroed down to simple, pure, self contained html, that I am generating from a python script.
And it's glorious.
I am generating interactive charts when the html is viewed in the browser, and hiding all of them and only printing static svg images when in print mode, using css media print queries.
And there is so much more.
The format is awesome for ingestion by ai models.
I always thought that everything from Sass was pretty much ported over by now.
/* Define a function: */
@function --gradient-to-transparent(--color, --direction: bottom) {
result: linear-gradient(
to var(--direction),
var(--color),
transparent;
);
}
Google said they weren't smart enough to implement it, or pay anyone to fix the one they forked a decade ago.
To me it feels like "programming in YAML", the way a declarative language/format acquires more and more features until you're writing functions in an awkward syntax that was never designed for it.
The worse part of working with CSS is that there is no standard static type checking tool (stylelint comes close though). A lot of programming errors should/could be caught at build time.
Sometimes wondering if a completely alternative syntax+tooling is possible that would leverage all the existing capabilities, while using a different language paradigm.
At an initial look I agree with you that the functions look very awkward. But I thought the same about CSS variables until I started using them and now I think they’re great so I’ll keep an open mind. I almost wonder if they would have been better off calling them “templates”, or something. “Functions” is going to make people think it’s just like JS.
Perhaps I should also be sympathetic to the spec authors, since they're working under tight constraints of language design. Things might look a lot more elegant if HTML/CSS/JS were designed from scratch as a coherent whole.
Broad support for new CSS features is GOOD.
Making BASIC SITE FUNCTIONALITY depend upon new CSS features is bad.
remove inheritance and cascade from css and then we'll talk. but for now ill stick to tailwind.