Jens Oliver Meiert

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My CSS Wishlist

Published on Feb 11, 2023 (updated Jul 1, 2023), filed under , . (Share this post, e.g., on Mastodon.)

This is one of 180 articles that you can also read in an ebook: On Web Development II.

Trim it.

CSS is awesome, all the new features are fantastic *, we’re making classless web development an actual option †, but CSS is sooo complex, it isn’t only impossible that anyone could master it—it’s also getting clear that more and more of it is ballast.

10 ways of layout, 20 options to set colors, 30 units, 50 selectors, &c. are great (and it doesn’t really matter which ones people use), but that is making the language unbelievably and, while inevitable, still questionably large and complex.

And yet we cannot cut CSS down, for us to maintain backwards-compatibility.

But that’s my CSS wishlist. ‡

Dave Rupert, Eric A. Meyer, Ahmad Shadeed, and probably a few more peers wrote the other wishlists you might like.

* When you go through all the reports, CSS in the 2020s has been Christmas every day.

† Unfortunately, only the classless frameworks team is seriously exploring this paradigm so far.

‡ Alongside conformant output, I wanted to add, but for codebase quality, accessibility, performance, and maintenance reasons, this is far more important for HTML.

About Me

Jens Oliver Meiert, on March 2, 2026.

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m an engineering lead, guerrilla philosopher, and indie publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead and engineering manager at various companies (e.g., Google); I’m an active web and tool developer (code optimization, digital defense), a contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and a book author (O’Reilly, Frontend Dogma).

I love trying things—in web development and engineering management, but also in politics and philosophy, where I hold to one idea in particular: that we can only be well if we take good care of everyone. Here on meiert.com I talk about some of my perspectives and experiences. (Please share feedback: Interpret charitably, keep it friendly, but do be critical.)