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

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.

Thanks,

Alan

Received on Tuesday, 18 March 2014 00:32:09 UTC