Fluent Web Development

Chapter 6. Robust CSS

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There is rarely a topic in web development that causes as much confusion, frustration, or simple misunderstanding as the web’s styling language, CSS. And this is remarkable; CSS is a simple language per se, with just a few syntax properties, making it overall very straightforward to write. But CSS is by no means easy. There are so many factors that influence how things are rendered, and some CSS bugs can keep people up at night.

Sounds familiar? You’re not alone. My first job as an independent consultant for web technologies was teaching CSS to a group of Enterprise developers who shipped software to millions. They had their web framework sorted out and no problem adopting TypeScript, but the styling language almost made them cry, especially at scale. Others, like styled components, tried to reinvent styling so much so that people were excited at first, to figure out that it becomes barely usable for a whole other set of reasons. This has become a whole business, with ...