A Vote for CSS Variables

I agree that the name is confusing. They really aren't variables.

If they act in a similar way to variables in SASS, then they can be reassigned without issue. They are not constant, although they may be treated as such.

Of course, the CSSWG will no doubt create a solution that is both absurd in it's complexity, and limited in it's use. For example, constants defined with css-constant('foo', 'bar') instead of $foo: bar

In Haskell we don't change our variables either, and nobody's confused.

I'm a designer and I just finished moving our product form CSS to Less.js (server-side preprocessed). This allowed me to define variables such as @baseColor, @buttonColor etc. so that the developers working on the project can use those instead of copy/pasting colours from other places and making a huge mess.

Variables are not logic. Once CSS seizes being declarative and starts becoming a programming language, I think we might start seeing problems, but the author is not suggesting adding an if-statement to CSS (one might argue that media queries are already conditional enough).

You make a good point, but real designers know how to code (at the very least HTML/CSS). I'd consider any veteran designer who tells you they're "frightened by code" to not be worth it. Perhaps new concepts like variables will just be natural selection for the front-end.

I'm a designer, by the way.

The mythical designer that

1) is able to write valid cross-browser CSS ready for deployment without developer tweaking

2) would not understand basic logical constructs such as CSS Constants.

does not, in fact, exist. At least, I have never met one.

Think of it like this, imagine there is a sort of spectrum for capability of abstract logical/mathematical related thought. Roughly, on one extreme end there's someone who is so intuitive practical you wouldn't trust to properly split a dinner bill (this is not a "designer stereotype" btw, but an example of the very extreme end of the scale), in between there's doing calculations, solving simple equations, writing CSS, writing CSS-with-constants, using a templating language, doing actual coding, hardcore coding genius, and at the far end there's Neo who can stop bullets with his mind by wearing the right kind of shades and longcoat.

Your fear of "having too much logic and driving designers away" is only valid if the majority of web-designers fall right between "capable of writing CSS" and "capable of writing CSS with constants". Sorry but that's a rather narrow range and I'm not buying it.

And the few designers that happen to fall exactly in that range will either have to write CSS without constants (which is fine), or learn to deal with it.

I'd be more as worried that unintuitive design would scare potential designers away.

Seeing something like #046e08 everywhere scared me much more as a new developer than something as simple as "let green1 = #046e08" would have.

There's no logic to defining constants. Which is what the "CSS Variables" proposals are about.

It merely makes maintenance much, much easier.

If something as simple as a variable scares you then I am guessing you have no hope in hell with dealing with a bit of jQuery, let alone Javascript.

Welcome to the real world. It's time to upskill.

Side note: Developers may be inferior designers, but that does not make them inferior coders, since by their nature, that is what they do day in, day out. I am not a designer, I am not a front end guy, but my html/css/javascript is a lot better quality and reusable than I have seen come out of any design agency. We won't even go into having any consideration of the selectors they use and any rendering speed they may have...

I'm afraid of the same thing, but not because it will drive away designers, but because CSS is meant to be, and is most powerful as a declarative language.

What CSS really needs is an actual layout module in the specification (instead of the hacks we still use to this day to execute the most simple of layouts).

With all that said, I do think variables are a great idea.

Then maybe we can get rid of all this javascript stuff and start sending .exe files to each other.

This isn't even close to being an 'issue'.

Unless maybe you are living in the 80s and using a Spectrum 48k?

Speed. Christ.

I really don't see how this would have a major negative impact on speed. If anything, it will allow CSS files to be smaller reducing the amount of data being downloaded to the client and may actually improve performance.

> The issue is speed.

It makes no difference, these are proposal for constants so it's trivial substitution. Furthermore by avoiding repeating the same value over and over again CSS variables likely reduce the file's size.

How so?

It's W3C, what were you expecting? It's the very best example of death-by-committee I've ever seen. If they designed a lightbulb, it'd require a 9 step checklist just to get it out of the packaging, wouldn't fit in the industry-standard socket (because, of course, they've reinvented the wheel again, poorly), and by the time you actually got the thing installed the rest of the world will have moved on to better light-producing devices, but will be forced to deal with the W3C brain-damaged version of the lightbulb because it's a "standard".