Re: [csswg-drafts] Let’s Define CSS 4 (#4770)

Some thoughts from a humble developer... 

I try to keep  up but frankly, I learn about the new things that solve problems for me and often discover new CSS features while searching for a way to do something. That's got advantages - I spend less time learning things that aren't useful to me now - but of course I sometimes learn of something new and think "I could have used that in [list of projects]...". But as a day to day author, I simply can't spend the time to learn of new things, play with them and then not use them, especially if, when I hear of them they're only supported in Chrome Canary or even only Chrome release. Features like that simply aren't useful to me because then of the need to consider how to do X (whatever problem the feature solves) in a more broadly supported manner. And if I can do that, why split how I implement? 

So, yes, if a CSS4 gets browser vendors on board to full support a list of features, that would be great. However, I do think that we'd need to see new versions at least every 3-5 years. Decade long pauses aren't really going to solve anything. 

@davatron5000 said upthread that  _"...JavaScript has seen a huge explosion in velocity and has published the following standards since 2015: ES6, ES2015, ES2016, ES2017, ES2018, ES.Next, ES7, ES8, and ES9...."_ and, honestly, I'm not sure that's a positive thing. Think about it from a front line perspective... do you need to keep on top of (counts....) NINE different versions that have all happened in the last 4-5 years? Is there engouh significant different from one to the next to really deserve a version rev? 

In some ways, this is a solved problem. Back ni the boxed software days (yeah, I'm older... ), a major revision (3 to 4) meant that the release  had big new things in it. A dot revision (.0 to .1) meant there were noticeable new features but they were minor. A really minor revision (.00 to .01) was often a bug fix release to the corresponding dot revision. 

So, what's wrong with porting that logic to CSS? CSS4 would have Grid, Flexbox, etc. 4.1 would have, say. multicolumn support or the like (I like @chriscoyier's list above). 

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Received on Wednesday, 19 February 2020 18:19:18 UTC