JavaScript Style Sheets (JSSS) was a technology introduced by Netscape in 1996. Chances are, you’ve never heard of JSSS, since it was available in Netscape Communicator 4.0. They allowed you to define custom styling rules for your web pages. You’re probably more familiar with its competitor at the time—CSS. They were pretty cool though. JSSS allowed the developer to style the DOM using a full programming language with variables, conditionals, and functions.

The obvious spoiler alert here is that CSS won and JSSS lost, right? It’s not that simple. A lot of the ideas from JSSS have slowly been creeping back into our toolset. SASS brought programming logic back into styling our applications. CSS picked up variables and the ability to do calculations. Finally, the React community has been—maybe unknowingly—bringing JSSS back from the dead. In this talk, we’ll take a good hard look at JSSS and the ways in which JSSS has had enduring legacy after its untimely demise.