Jens Oliver Meiert

My CSS Wishlist

Published on Feb 11, 2023 (updated Jul 1, 2023), filed under , (feed). (Share this on Mastodon or Bluesky?)

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 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 code base quality, accessibility, performance, and maintenance reasons, this is far more important for HTML.

About Me

Jens Oliver Meiert, on November 9, 2024.

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a web developer, manager, and author. I’ve been working as a technical lead and engineering manager for companies you’ve never heard of and companies you use every day, I’m an occasional contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my experiences and views. (I value you being critical, interpreting charitably, and giving feedback.)