Sometimes we gotta get into the unglamorous parts of CSS. I mean *I* think they are pretty glamorous: new syntax, new ideas, new code doing foundational and important things. I just mean things that don’t demo terribly well. Nothing is flying across the screen, anyway.
- The Future of CSS: Construct
<custom-ident>and<dashed-ident>values withident()by Bramus Van Damme — When you goanchor-name: --name;the--namepart is a custom property, right? No. It is a “custom ident”. It doesn’t have a value, it’s just a name. Things get more interesting withident()as a function, which can help us craft them from other attributes and custom properties, making for much less repetitive code in some situations. - Beating
!importantuser agent styles (sort of) by Noah Liebman — Using!importantis a pretty hardcore way for a rule to apply, made even more hardcore when used by a low level stylesheet, of which user agent styles are the lowest. So is it even possible to beat a style set that way? Click to find out. - Here’s Why Your Anchor Positioning Isn’t Working by James Stuckey Weber — There is a whole host of reasons why including DOM positioning and order. If you ask Una she’ll say it’s probably the
insetproperty. - Faux Containers in CSS Grids by Tyler Sticka — Elements that stick out of their “container” is a visually compelling look. A classic way to do it is with negative margins and absolute positioning and the like. But those things are a smidge “dangerous” in that they can cause overlaps and unexpected behavior due to being out of regular flow. I like Tyler’s idea here of keeping it all contained to a grid and just making it look like it’s breaking out.
- Introducing
@bramus/style-observer, aMutationObserverfor CSS by Bramus Van Damme — A regularMutationObserverwatches the DOM for changes. But not style changes. Bramus has created a version of it that does, thanks to a very newfangled CSS property that helps it work efficiently. I’m not overflowing with use case ideas, but I have a feeling that when you need it, you need it. - Using the upcoming CSS when/else rules by Christiana Uloma — There is a working draft spec for
@when/@elseso while these aren’t real right now, maybe they will be? Theif()function seems more real and maybe that is enough here? Theif()function would just be a value though not a whole block of stuff, so maybe we’ll get both.