Due to the ever-growing popularity of React, Facebook’s user interface library, there has been some discussion on the topic of CSS and whether or not it has a future in its current form — that is, in the form of declarations in a separate stylesheet that provide presentation information for a given page or section of markup.
I’m not going to rehash the conversation or the pros and cons here. For those not familiar, here are a few links you can check out:
- The Debate Around “Do We Even Need CSS Anymore?” by Chris Coyier
- React: CSS in JS slides and video presentation
But what I will do is provide some strong evidence that CSS is alive and well.
The developers are restless
When I read the reactions and heated debates in comment sections of articles like this one or this one, two things become clear:
- Developers are passionate about CSS
- Developers are not happy with some of the proposed solutions for large CSS projects
The two links in the second bullet point in the introduction above are a slide deck and video presentation by Christopher Chedeau, a developer working for Facebook on the React project. This past week was the first time I tried delving into React a little bit, thanks to this great tutorial by Shu Uesegi. After that simple introduction, the slides gave me a little more context.
Christopher addresses 7 CSS architecture problems that he believes can be solved by using JavaScript to manage and implement styles. This is the kind of thing that makes a lot of purists shudder because, with React, you’re basically writing your markup and styles in your JavaScript — something that’s usually discouraged in keeping with “separation of concerns”.
The screenshot below captures one of Christopher’s pertinent slides in this regard, outlining the 7 problems that React attempts to address:
Christopher makes a great case for solving CSS’s problems in JavaScript, so I highly recommend you keep an open mind and check out his slide deck (although I’ll forgive him for saying that w3schools is his favorite website for learning JavaScript!).
So it’s clear that it feels like a CSS revolution is needed and some might say it’s already under way. But it’s also clear that CSS in its current form is not going away anytime soon.
CSS tips and tricks are in high demand
If you were keeping tabs on your RSS feeds and Twitter stream in the past week or so, then you probably came across my most recent CSS article. That was one of the most enjoyable articles to write, and judging by the incredible response in the comments and on social media, I’m glad to see that it was as enjoyable for readers.
[caption id="attachment_110386" align="aligncenter" width="800"]
The popularity of those types of articles demonstrates that developers still love CSS in its traditional form. Tweets by Ilya Grigorik, Smashing Magazine, CSS-Tricks, and others were shared and favorited hundreds of times. And the traffic to that article and its predecessor has been amazing.
The content in my articles is mostly covering stuff that’s been available in browsers for years, not just the new “CSS3” features. In fact, I intentionally tried to use as many cross-browser CSS tips as possible and the response has been overwhelming.
But this sort of thing is not unique to my article. Consider past CSS articles on other sites that have been hot in the community. Two that immediately come to mind are, not coincidentally, both by Heydon Pickering:
Continue reading %CSS is Alive and Well%
by Louis Lazaris via SitePoint
No comments:
Post a Comment