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Discussion on: What is the future of CSS?

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darkwiiplayer profile image
𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️

Old-school CSS was very much about compiling esoteric idioms for simple design concepts into actual designs (float et al.), but these days the language has idioms for most of the common design patterns, so writing CSS is much more about actually describing the design and less about fighting the available paradigms.

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auroratide profile image
Timothy Foster • Edited

Yep, exactly! Another example I thought of is aspect-ratio which is a great idiom for ideas like "I want a square", and superior to 100% bottom padding jank.

I do still find myself occasionally wishing for a better idiom (such as for overlap where you have to choose between absolute positioning, negative margins, or things sharing a grid space), but it's way better than it was a decade ago, and why I think it'll keep getting better.

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darkwiiplayer profile image
𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️

Yes, a content-overlap property would be pretty nice.

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fjones profile image
FJones

I think it's worth noting that CSS was, initially, effectively a language for print-style layouting. No one really intended for it to work with viewport-covering areas or boxed layouts in the sense we're used to now. We abused the living hell out of it by exploiting the underlying rendering algorithms, e.g. using float to create column layouts, or using table layouts. The rest was what HTML and framesets were meant to take care of.