Re: [css-variables] Split declaring custom properties from using the values?

On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 5:31 PM, Alan Stearns <stearns@adobe.com> wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> At the start of all the recent bikeshedding, Tab mentioned that one of the
> primary use cases for custom properties is to do CSS polyfills. I’m very
> much looking forward to that future day when there is enough custom
> property support across browsers to do this.
>
> I’m wondering whether that day might come faster if we separate declaring
> custom properties (which is all a polyfill needs) from using the custom
> property values in other declarations. It’s a smaller step for each
> browser to take, and recent #webkit IRC chat makes me think that project
> might be interested in this approach. Would Blink and/or IE be willing to
> take this first step sooner than taking on all of the current level 1
> draft?
>
> I’m suggesting that we take section 3 of the current draft and move it to
> level 2, if that gets us to better CSS polyfills faster. If this works, it
> might even accelerate both steps - once declaring custom properties are in
> place, adding code to use them becomes a smaller step, too.

Given that Firefox is already about to ship with var(), I don't think
it's a good idea to punt it to another level - we'd just pull it back
in almost immediately.

However, I *do* think it's worthwhile to emphasize more strongly that
custom properties are just that - custom properties - and that using
them as sources for variables is just one possible use, and to
emphasize within Blink that we can just implement the "custom
properties" part (as that's fairly easy), and then do the var() part
later.

~TJ

Received on Tuesday, 18 March 2014 00:42:13 UTC