[BinaryIdiot]

> Variables though, I can't see how you can go without them.

The point of variables is to allow the setting of one style property and applying it to others, right? So why not just to that at the top level element and inherit it down? Typically you only want to select a handful of colors for a web site / application so simply set those at the highest level possible then allow CSS inheritance to work.

Out of all of the big projects I've been on only one has used CSS preprocessors and I've never run into an issue with needing to change a value in too many places. It doesn't seem all that hard to avoid if I'm being honest here it just really, really depends on the structure of your CSS and HTML.

[agnivade]

I am no expert in css but let's say you have a title heading color and you want the button color to be the same as that. You need to specify it separately in 2 places right ?

[BinaryIdiot]

No but ultimately specifying it in two places could be better.

So first off if you want it to literally be the same then you could do something like:

  h1, button {
    color: #343434;
  }

That would make them the same. You could also do

  .primaryColor {
    color: #343434;
  }

Then set the elements which should have a primary color with that class.

But if you could break my first example apart and set it in two places just as easily. But that's setting it at a high level element itself. You could even go crazier and set EVERYTHING to that color but ultimately many of these decisions have to be context based to decide.

[sangnoir]

What if want to use the primary color as the background-color to a nav element and as the border-color to inputs and textareas as well? If the designer changes to a different shade, do you do a global search-and-replace?

The way I see it, CSS preprocessors allow for code reuse via composition - vanilla CSS restricts you to inheritance.

[tonyhb]

Css is quite frankly bullshit (ie. fickle), but I'm proud of it.

The actual art of making visuals usable within a screen is pretty hard to make a language out of. With postcss and react css modules there are advancements. And still, it's one of the things that I have to put the least amount of effort in for the most amount of gain.

[BinaryIdiot]

> What if want to use the primary color as the background-color to a nav element and as the border-color to inputs and textareas as well? If the designer changes to a different shade, do you do a global search-and-replace?

I already explained this? You set it at the top level. Have a set of top level HTML elements / classes that set all of these defaults. Then everything inherits from those. Only one place to change them.

[sangnoir]

> I already explained this? You set it at the top level

Not quite: 'color', 'background-color' and 'border-color' are 3 separate properties that can't be be inherited from one place using vanilla CSS

[BinaryIdiot]

Those are three different ways of coloring something (and very rarely are exactly the same in my experience). Using variables to make those three the same color is an abuse of DRY in my opinion.

[snarfy]

> Then set the elements which should have a primary color with that class.

But now your markup is littered with styling classes, and you could end up with a .secondary button with a .primaryColor class.

In vanilla css, the only way to really define something like a primary color just once and have it apply correctly to all elements is to define it at a high level in a deeply nested cascade. This of course all breaks as soon as you add a container element and have to go back and add another level of nesting to your css.

Variables in css should be standard.

[bphogan]

Just a nitpick.

I hate, hate, hate having to alter my HTML to apply styles. The idea of

<h1 class="primaryColor">

totally creeps me out. I do it because other people refuse to use preprocessors and think that altering the HTML to include presentational details is fine (see Bootstrap.)

But it still feels gross to me.

[BinaryIdiot]

> totally creeps me out. I do it because other people refuse to use preprocessors and think that altering the HTML to include presentational details is fine (see Bootstrap.) But it still feels gross to me.

To be fair HTML is the presentation. I can understand not wanting to mix business logic from JavaScript into a page but CSS is just the other half of HTML.

If it makes it nicer you could use more generic class terms (such as page information or HTML structure location, etc).

[bphogan]

HTML is not the presentation.

HTML is the content and description of content. You put a <strong> tag around text to make it strong emphasis.

CSS is the presentation. Your browser sees the <strong> tag and applies its default style of making it bold.

[BinaryIdiot]

They're both the presentation. Showing emphasis and structuring content is as much part of the presentation as CSS, maybe even more so if you care about backwards compatibility and graceful degradation.

This is just incredibly pedantic. For all practical purposes HTML + CSS is the presentation. Toss JavaScript into that if you want. Front-end work is the presentation.