Bringing back the 1990s: The revenge of JavaScript Style Sheets
summary
Historic browser code demonstrates that JavaScript Style Sheets implant a real runtime language into CSS: implemented only in Netscape Navigator 4, JSSS lets styles run functions, prompt users, pick a random runtime theme, and switch rules by window width — but cannot modify the DOM in that implementation and dies by 2000. The concrete outcomes are clear: CSS gains variables and calc, SASS and React reintroduce runtime-like logic, and modern work (Houdini / CSSOM) tries to expose the missing primitives.
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chapters (20)
- 0:00Intro
- 1:00The year 1996
- 5:27The idea of style sheets
- 14:03CSS vs JavaScript
- 15:20JavaScript Style Sheets
- 20:36Moving slides around
- 21:00Dynamic evaluation
- 22:03Specificity
- 22:19CSS
- 23:39Missed opportunities
- 27:23CSS Object Model
- 28:57DOM
- 29:33Our craft has evolved
- 33:07A familiar pattern
- 33:28Higher class problems
- 33:49JavaScript has been dealt with
- 34:00What we did
- 34:13CSS is broken
- 35:50Compile Time vs Runtime
- 37:26Wrapup
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