Better CSS (for developers)

[Grizzly]

Hey folks, I was just wondering if anyone had any idea how to go about
(and how hard it would be to) implementing native support for
something like SASS style css or even HAML markup?
-- or any of the various other equally valid improvements available
out there!

I'm not trying to do the W3C's job but as a web developer I feel that
it's about time that CSS got a major injection of some powerful
functionality. It was originally designed to be very quick and easy to
learn for 'non-techie' people, but it just doesn't really succeed at
that. So why not forgo the "let's try to make it simple so that
everyone can do it" and instead give developers the kind of
functionality, tools and means that we so desperately need!

What do people think?

(If there's enough interest I would consider setting up a community /
regulatory group to decide how the language should take shape)

-- Chris --

[Adam Prescott]

I think you should really be talking to the W3C. You'll find the CSS development mailing list at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/ where technical discussions about the spec take place. Not everyone will agree on how CSS should be improved, and it's important that browsers continue their standards-compliance-based approach for something as fundamental as the development of CSS, for the benefit of everyone; I don't think anyone really wants to start taking backward steps towards writing for specific browsers.

I assume there's no real difficulty in using SCSS the way you're currently able to, and this is just about updating the CSS spec? If SCSS becomes popular and well-used enough, improvements to CSS via the W3C will happen naturally! And then they'll be available to everyone.

As for the simplicity of CSS, I think it's certainly simple enough. Even when it becomes more difficult, it's still simpler than other aspects of front-end development. Once you understand the framework CSS provides, and the various selectors and properties, it's quite easy to make the changes you want. It has a low barrier to entry. I don't think we should actively try and move away from that, as you suggest.

[Grizzly]

True, I can see what your saying, and I agree that the specification
would need to be standardised. But maybe the W3C (who like any
committee do their fair share of procrastinating) need some gentle
encouragement or motivation to really improve the CSS language, and
what better motivation than a 'would be' rival? After all what I'm
proposing isn't intended to drastically change the purpose of CSS,
simply the methods involved in achieving the same goals (and perhaps
SASS is going a bit too far) but there are some great ideas out there
that would make small but incredibly useful improvements for
developers using CSS -- e.g. nested styles for one, I'm thinking along
the DRY principals here.

You get me wrong, I'm all for standards, I love standards, I hope and
pray for the day when a website will look and work the same in all
browsers from just one 'standard' code base, but I wont hold my
breath! Now, even with the advent of CSS3 there are still numerous
browser inconsistencies, plus the need for backwards compatibility for
out dated and broken (CSS'ly speaking) browsers and these problems
aren't going to go away any time soon.

Just ask yourselves -- Should progress really be halted just to allow
various independent software developers (who have no real commitment
to supporting the W3C and run to their own schedules) time to catch
up?

Or look at it this way -- Would Crysis be as good as it is if CryTek
had thought "Hey let's just work to what graphics cards are capable of
now!"? -- No!!
Admittedly maybe an odd comparison to draw but I hope that you can see
my point.


On Aug 26, 1:07 pm, Adam Prescott <a...@aprescott.com> wrote:

[Adam Prescott]

On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 1:50 PM, Grizzly <jabo...@googlemail.com> wrote:

True, I can see what your saying, and I agree that the specification
would need to be standardised. But maybe the W3C (who like any
committee do their fair share of procrastinating) need some gentle
encouragement or motivation to really improve the CSS language, and
what better motivation than a 'would be' rival?

Much like how WHATWG spurred the W3C into not abandoning HTML, or something different? What kind of rival would this group be?

 

After all what I'm
proposing isn't intended to drastically change the purpose of CSS,
simply the methods involved in achieving the same goals (and perhaps
SASS is going a bit too far) but there are some great ideas out there
that would make small but incredibly useful improvements for
developers using CSS -- e.g. nested styles for one, I'm thinking along
the DRY principals here.

I'm generally in agreement. It would be nice to have improvements like this on top of the "bare" syntax.

 

You get me wrong, I'm all for standards, I love standards, I hope and
pray for the day when a website will look and work the same in all
browsers from just one 'standard' code base, but I wont hold my
breath! Now, even with the advent of CSS3 there are still numerous
browser inconsistencies, plus the need for backwards compatibility for
out dated and broken (CSS'ly speaking) browsers and these problems
aren't going to go away any time soon.

Just ask yourselves -- Should progress really be halted just to allow
various independent software developers (who have no real commitment
to supporting the W3C and run to their own schedules) time to catch
up?

The two can be separated a little. The software developers who are behind can catch up at whatever speed they want, and it won't halt progress on the spec, as long as there's enough momentum at the front to carry development. That said, I'm not sure that a native implementation of syntax alterations is the way to go. Vendors add their own in-development CSS properties with vendor prefixes (-webkit-, -moz-, etc.), but that's quite a different matter from expanding the syntax!

 

If you form a "rival" group aiming at making their own improvements to CSS while W3C is still going on, what happens when one set of browser vendors follow the W3C on a CSS decision and another set follow your new group? With WHATWG, the W3C had abandoned development on HTML. In the current situation, W3C's HTMLWG "pulls" from WHATWG and the two will converge eventually. I guess my question is, what do you envisage?