Re: [csswg-drafts] [css-borders] allow multiple borders (#13044)

I think Noam's already covered the arguments here well. We don't want multiple different border styles (multiple dots/dashes would look *horrific*, they'd be misaligned by default, and even aligned, multiple dots don't look great; groove/notch/inset/outset are just `solid` with some magic and possibly 2-color striping, and also would still just look weird to stack up). We do want multiple different border colors. We could want *either* multiple border widths *or* one big border width (with the colors being responsible for distributing themselves inside the width), but the existing tech (aka, how groove/notch work) suggests that "one big width" might be preferable. 

Further, as noted, understanding a comma-separated `border-color` that also sets different colors per side is, imo, near impossible. Two dimensions of optimal repetition is very difficult to mentally parse! Imagine manually doing `groove`, for example; it would require `gray black black gray, black gray gray black`, compared to `stripes(gray, black) stripes(black, gray) stripes(black, gray) stripes(gray, black)`, which is longer but has each side nicely grouped so it's trivial to understand what's happening on each side.

Multiple border *also* doesn't allow for gradient fades unless you go to enormous effort faking it with stacked 1px borders. That style isn't particular common these days, but the 3d border styles we used to have utilized it, and that style might return.

So that's why we settled on the design we did, and I still strongly believe it's the optimal solution, given the constraints. There are some alternatives that read better *in the simplest possible case* (all solid shape, each 'ring' the same color, which is the exact scenario you used in your poll), but fall apart the moment things get more complex. 

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Received on Monday, 3 November 2025 20:49:53 UTC