Sent by Chad A Gard on 28 March 2004 03:03
Since folks are talking about pet peeves with CSS, perhaps it's a good
time to bring up a thought I have often had as an addition. Perhaps
it's already being considered, as I've not really read any of the CSS3
recommendations yet...
But, does anyone else think it would be nice to have variables in
stylesheets? For example, in a complex site with multiple style sheets
with lots of selectors and rules, there are often only a handful off
colors that are used, but they're used in lots of places. One color
could be used for a header background, visited links in a menu, and the
borders on images in a #productInfo div (OK, probably an unrealistic
conglomeration, but you get the idea). Another color could be used for
links, h1's and h3's in the content area, as well as the bullets on
ul's.
So, as it is, one has to specify the color in multiple places. Now,
the client (or you or whomever) decides that instead of using the puce
color for the logo for the links, h1's, h3's, and ul bullets, he wants
a pretty tangerine color that hilights the color of his dog's eyes in
the bio section.
So, now, you have to search-and-replace throughout your stylesheets on
that color. Not usually a big deal, unless you happen to have more
than one logical collection of things that are the same color.
What I'd like to see is the ability to do something like this:
$logocolor = #c3c;
$dullcolor = #000;
$impactcolor = #f00;
$coolcolor = #00f;
body { color: $dullcolor}
a { color: $coolcolor;
border: 1px solid $logocolor;
}
a:hover { color: $impactcolor;
border: 1px solid $coolcolor;
}
etc. etc.
presumably variables could be used for any property value, or perhaps
even any string of text. Colors are just what come to mind to me most
frequently. Presumably they fit into the DOM such that a variable
defined anywhere would be global across all stylesheets, unless it had
been declared in a media-specific stylesheet.
Anyone else ever have thoughts along these lines? Is there a way to
make such suggestions to the W3C without being a member of a member
organization or joining the [EMAIL-REMOVED] list, which would seem to
only rarely be of interest to me?
Chad A Gard
http://www.percussionadvocates.com/chad
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