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by masklinn 442 days ago
On the other hand:

- XPath literally didn't exist when CSS selectors were introduced

- XPath's flexibility makes it a lot more challenging to implement efficiently, even more so when there are thousands of rules which need to be dynamically reevaluated at each document update

- XPath is lacking conveniences dedicated to HTML semantics, and handrolling them in xpath 1.0 was absolutely heinous (go try and implement a class predicate in xpath 1.0 without extensions)
1 comments
mdaniel 442 days ago
> - XPath literally didn't exist when CSS selectors were introduced

[citation required]

https://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xpath-19991116/

https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1-961217

> W3C Recommendation 17 Dec 1996, revised 11 Jan 1999

There are various drafts and statuses, so it's always open to hair-splitting but based only on the publication date CSS does appear to win

link