Web Builder Zone - Comments for "My CSS Wishlist"

@Joe,Thanks for the

jlorenzen — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:28:29 -0400

@Joe,

Thanks for the interest. Yeah we will definitely post an article on dzone once we cut a first release.

RIght now would be a good time to join the users list and submit any ideas or requirements. What web server do you use, jdk version, etc?

@James:There's going to be

ext237 — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:58:20 -0400

@James:

There's going to be plenty of people interested in your progress. To keep us all up-to-date, can you post an article to dzone with some details once you have your first release.

The Co. I work for is evaluating long-term choices for render, and we're a java shop. If you can port this successfully, your project will be on our short-list.

Just an update a coworker

jlorenzen — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:25:52 -0400

Just an update a coworker and myself plan on porting this over to java.

Here is the project: https://sass4j.dev.java.net/

We don't have an official release yet, but we have proved out the concept.

Look for a release in the next couple of months.

Hello James,It definitely

davidwalsh — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:49:17 -0500

Hello James,

It definitely wouldn't hurt to put it out there, but I'm not sure how used it would get. It's clearly a helpful tool though.

David

@DavidYeah we noticed that

jlorenzen — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 09:06:36 -0500

@David

Yeah we noticed that as well since we are mostly a java shop here. We have tossed around the idea of porting it over to java and also php. Would you see this as being pretty valuable out in the community? In other words would you see this attracting a large user base?

Looks pretty good James.

davidwalsh — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 08:58:03 -0500

Looks pretty good James. No PHP though? Damn.

You should take a look at

jlorenzen — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:40:28 -0500

You should take a look at this SASS (Syntactically Awesome StyleSheets) project: http://haml.hamptoncatlin.com/docs/rdoc/classes/Sass.html

I only found it yesterday from a co-worker. It has implemented alot of your suggestions and much much more. Its a ruby project so it might limit your choices, but I think a friend and I are planning on porting it over to a J2EE environment.

Some interesting ideas, some

davewoods100 — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 10:14:42 -0500

Some interesting ideas, some of which have already been proposed...

Web Fonts
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/cssatten

Multiple Background Images
http://www.css3.info/preview/multiple-backgrounds/

Maximum and minimum font sizes is an interesting idea but I think it would be heavily open to abuse as people would start declaring something like...

min-font-size: 10px;
max-font-size: 10px;

...which would see browsers take a step backwards in accessibility if it was implemented so I don't think we're ever likely to see that happen. Ensuring that a site renders correctly 2 sizes larger and 2 sizes smaller should be adequate for most users anyway.

Great post! If you don't

ext237 — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:31:00 -0500

Great post! If you don't want to type "#ffffea" over and over, you have another option other than variables. Since CSS allows you to stack class names within an element tag, you can define specific attributes and then use the classnames that are needed. So if you want to use a blue background over and over, you can create a class called ".blueBg":

.blueBg {background-color:lightblue;}
.fontBold {font-weight:bolder;}

and then stack the CSS class names in your element:

<div class="blueBg">this background is blue</div>
<div class="fontBold">this font is bold</div>
<div class="fontBold blueBg">this background is blue and the font is bold</div>

Its not as clean as your proposed code, but if your class has 5, 6 or 12 specifications for that selector, it can really keep the CSS code clean.

I totally support all of

chriscoyier — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:17:00 -0500

I totally support all of these too. Variables alone would be amazing.

There has definitely been some toying around with the font embedding idea. I don't think it's a technical issue at this point but an copyright issue. It's kind of like the whole "writer's strike" thing actually. Font have never really been widely used this way before, so font foundries are trying to figure out how to get their cut of the action while they can. Much like the writer's were holding out for a cut of the digital download action...

I'm not sure what side I'm on actually. Just because I bought a font, does that give me the right to embed it into a website and share it with the world? How does that relate to what we are already able to do in print design? Is there a way to protect the font file so that it's no a publicly accessible file that can be very easily stolen?

Hilariously, there was a

dubness — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 18:01:46 -0500

Hilariously, there was a point in time that I compiled all CSS files as JSPs so that I would have the capability of variables. Don't know if I should be admitting that... Anyway, great list David, I totally support these.