Re: [csswg-drafts] [css-nesting] Problem with mixing properties and selectors (#8249)

I feel we need a new thread to discuss how authors will handle the transition period, and what we can do to improve that experience. 

But, some replies to @romainmenke above:

> This is not true. Not even `flex` has `99.9%` adoption and that shipped 10 years ago.

It has [99.23%](https://caniuse.com/flexbox), which is pretty close.
And authors *do* use Flex (and grid) without shipping alternatives. They don't generally need features to reach 99.9% support to use them without backup, anything over ~93% or so tends to be considered good enough for that in my experience.
(and let's not forget that [even `font-size` only has 96%](https://caniuse.com/mdn-css_properties_font-size) (!))

> Authors don't want to use tools for anything. If nesting never ships it will also never reach the point when tools become unneeded.

I'm a bit confused at this. The rest of your comment seems to be making the point that authors will simply never use native Nesting and will just continue to preprocess until the end of time. Here you're saying authors don't want to use tools for anything. Will they, or won't they use tools to transpile Nesting?

> Authors typically do not like a change that will both slow down their project for end users and add to the complexity of their stack. Even when it only causes perf issues for users on older browsers.

I disagree.

- If this were true, nobody would be using polyfills, which are regularly much slower than writing code without the new technology that is being polyfilled in the first place. With polyfills one typically exchanges speed in modern browsers and codebase simplicity for slowness in older browsers, and this is a tradeoff I've seen authors make over and over.
- In my experience many (not all) authors do see value in being able to ship their code without needing build tools, and Nesting for many authors is the last remaining reason to preprocess CSS. Even if they need to use build tools to support older browsers, it's a markedly different paradigm than using build tools for code to work, anywhere. 
- Not every consumer of these technologies is a user facing website. E.g. this also means that libraries can offer a lighter bundle for projects that don't need to support older browsers, and a heavier one for those that do.
- Being able to iterate on untranspiled code speeds up prototyping quite significantly, even if the code will eventually be transpiled in production.



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Received on Monday, 10 April 2023 13:09:19 UTC