86 upvotes, 0 direct replies (showing 0)
View submission: The web redesign, CSS, and mod tools
From other comments, it sounds like you mean that CSS will no longer be an option available for use. If you actually meant "deprecated" as in "discouraged from use" rather than "unavailable for use", that wouldn't be nearly as big of a deal to me, as I'm sure many of us would be happy to continue using it even in that state. Anyway...
It’s web-only. Increasing users are viewing Reddit on mobile (over 50%), where CSS is not supported. We’d love for you to be able to bring your spice to phones as well.
I use the desktop site even when browsing with a mobile device. Why, you may ask? Part of it is because a lot of subreddits have implemented their own functionalities using CSS, and the amount is so wide and varied that you'd waste a ridiculous amount of man hours if you tried to replicate them all, but that's just part of a bigger issue that affects more than just CSS: The mobile app is that it is simply not compatible with much of the functionality established with the desktop site.
Some non-CSS examples of where mobile is troublingly inconsistent with the desktop site:
So I'm sorry to say it, but in my opinion the problem with the mobile experience isn't CSS; it's idiosyncrasies the app has with the desktop experience, of which CSS is only one.
2: https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/5u9yh8/improvements_to_subreddit_rules/delkpcb
Since I feel bad pointing out only the negatives, I'll slip in the two things I actually do like about the mobile app: Push notifications for new messages are great and having consistently readable font sizes is good.
CSS is a pain in the ass: it’s difficult to learn; it’s error-prone; and it’s time consuming.
Others have already said it, but for many of us "CSS mods", Reddit's CSS options are what encouraged us to learn a markup language we otherwise would likely not have bothered to learn nearly as much about, and that translates into skills that can be used outside of Reddit as well. CSS isn't for everyone, sure, but any decent-sized subreddit that has started to take off is able to find someone who knows it, or better yet, will encourage someone on their mod team to learn it. It hasn't been a realistic problem, and the benefits of having it outweighed the disadvantages for most subreddits as far as I can see.
All in all, this is just the latest in a string of decisions Reddit has made that I find disappointing as a moderator, but this one is on a much larger scale. Sure, having to update CSS to handle breaking changes to website markup is annoying, but it's far better than not having it at all. You mention new tools and such, but I'm sorry, I don't think whatever tools you can introduce thanks to this change will ever make up for the functionality lost through it.
I know this comment almost certainly won't cause you to change your mind on the direction for this site, but I still hope that it, along with all the others here, will at least cause you to start reconsidering.
There's nothing here!