The way JavaScript works is we can do scripts as an inline block:

<script>
  let foo = "bar";
</script>

Or, if the script should be fetched from the network...

<script src="/js/global.js"></script>

With CSS, we can do an inline block of styles:

<style>
  .foo { color: red; }
</style>

So why not <style src=""></style>? Instead, we have <link href=""/>.

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If you've been writing JavaScript for some time now, it's almost certain you've written some scripts dealing with the Document Object Model (DOM). DOM scripting takes advantage of the fact that a web page opens up a set of APIs (or interfaces) so you can manipulate and otherwise deal with elements on a page.

But there's another object model you might want to become more familiar with: The CSS Object Model (CSSOM). Likely you've already used it but didn't necessarily realize it.

In this guide, I'm going to go through many of the most important features of the CSSOM, starting with stuff that's more commonly known, then moving on to some more obscure, but practical, features.

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I think it's kinda cool to see Google dropping repos of interesting web components. It demonstrates the possibilities of cool new web features and allows them to ship them in a way that's compatible with entirely web standards.

Here's one: <two-up>

I wanted to give it a try, so I linked up their example two-up-min.js script in a Pen and used the element by itself to see how it works. They expose the component's styling with custom properties, which I'd say is a darn nice use case for those.

See the Pen <two-up&rt; by Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) on CodePen.

What naming scheme do you use for color variables?
Have you succeeded at writing CSS that uses color variables in a manner agnostic to the colors they represent?
I've tried all of the following, and I have yet to succeed at writing CSS that works well with any color scheme. ☹️

— Lea Verou (@LeaVerou) October 14, 2018

I remember the very first time I tried Sass on a project. The first thing I wanted to do was variablize my colors. From my naming-things-in-HTML skillz, I knew to avoid classes like .header-blue-left-bottom because the color and position of that element might change. It's better for the to reflect it what it is than what it looks like.

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Compound components in React allow you to create components with some form of connected state that’s managed amongst themselves. A good example is the Form component in Semantic UI React.

To see how we can implement compound components in a real-life React application, we’ll build a compound (multi-part) form for login and sign up. The state will be saved in the form component and we’ll put React’s Context AP to use to pass that state and the method from the Context Provider to the component that needs them. The component that needs them? It will become a subscriber to Context Consumers.

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The public-consumption blog post:

Ultimately, we want to make the web experience better for many different audiences. People using Microsoft Edge (and potentially other browsers) will experience improved compatibility with all web sites, while getting the best-possible battery life and hardware integration on all kinds of Windows devices. Web developers will have a less-fragmented web platform to test their sites against, ensuring that there are fewer problems and increased satisfaction for users of their sites; and because we’ll continue to provide the Microsoft Edge service-driven understanding of legacy IE-only sites, Corporate IT will have improved compatibility for both old and new web apps in the browser that comes with Windows.

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Still no word from the horse's mouth about the reported EdgeHTML demise, but I hear that's coming later today. The blog posts are starting to roll in about the possible impact of this though.

Andre Garzia: While we Blink, we loose the Web:

Even though Opera, Beaker and Brave are all doing very good work, it is still Chrome engine behind them and that limits the amount of stuff they can build and innovate. It is like as if they were building cars, there is a lot they can do without actually changing the engine itself, and thats what the Web Browsers are becoming, everyone is working on parts of the car but all the engines are now Chrome and believe me, you don’t want all the engines to be the same, not even if they are all Gecko or if somehow we resurrect Presto, we want diversity of engines and not monoculture.

Tim Kadlec, Risking a Homogeneous Web:

I can understand the logic. Microsoft can’t put as many folks on Edge (including EdgeHTML for rendering and Chakra for JavaScript) as Google has done with Chromium (using Blink for rendering and V8 for JavaScript), so keeping up was always going to be a challenge. Now they can contribute to the same codebase and try to focus on the user-focused features. Whether this gets people to pay more attention to their next browser or not remains to be seen, but I get the thinking behind the move.

The big concern here is we’ve lost another voice from an engine perspective.

Ferdy Christant, The State of Web Browsers:

Edge is doomed. It was doomed and its next version will be equally doomed from the start. For the simple reason that Microsoft has close to no say in how browsers get installed: on mobile as a default app, and on desktop via web services under the control of Google. Switching to Chromium makes no difference in market share, as the only way to compete now is through the browser’s UI, not via the engine. Which isn’t a competition at all, since browser UI is a commodity.

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This is the second post in a two-part series that looks into the way CSS variables can be used to make the code for complex layouts and interactions less difficult to write and a lot easier to maintain. The first installment walks through various use cases where this technique applies. This post covers the use of fallbacks and invalid values to extend the technique to non-numeric values.

The strategy of using CSS Variables to drive the switching of layouts and interactions that we covered in the first post in this series comes with one major caveat: it only works with numeric values — lengths, percentages, angles, durations, frequencies, unit-less number values and so on. As a result, it can be really frustrating to know that you're able to switch the computed values of more than ten properties with a single CSS variable, but then you need to explicitly switch the non-numeric values of properties like flex-direction or text-align from row to column or from left to right or the other way around.

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