Does the phrase “functional CSS” mean nothing to you? Do you assume that any CSS that makes something look a certain way must be “functional?” Have you heard about things like CSS BEM or Tachyons, but never really understood what they meant in practice? This week we look at the concept of functional CSS, what it is, what the popular patterns are, and more. Beyond that, we look at why functional CSS exists, and why it’s popularity is increasing amid a need to solve a problem dealing with maintainable CSS. The more important question is: Is it time for us to throw out the “C” in CSS?

Before that, we start the show to talk for a few minutes and consider the future of FTP as a tool for web development. What do you think about it? Have we moved on from the usefulness of the protocol to other things? Check out the links below.

• As Crosscheck Moves to Secure Voter Data, Hacking Fears Grow Among Experts and Politicians
• Debian: Shutting down public FTP services
• FTP Is Dead. Long Live FTP!
• Top 5 Reasons Why FTP is Dead

Followup Resources

• Astrum
• BEM 101
• A brief history of CSS until 2016
• Component Based Design System With Tachyons
• CSS Utility Classes and “Separation of Concerns”
• Functional CSS and Tachyons (The Changelog Episode #272)
• Koala
• MaintainableCSS
• Pattern Lab
• The Sass and Compass tutorial for absolute beginners
• Takeaways from trying out Tachyons CSS after ages using BEM
• We Write CSS Like We Did in the 90s, and Yes, It’s Silly
• What are CSS Modules and why do we need them?