A ‘constant’ is a fixed value that cannot be changed at run-time – if the values you are setting are fixed as in the examples above then I think constant is the correct term. If you are allowing them to be altered by the user – for example dynamically setting a background color – then you would be correct in calling them variables. My primary reason for using the word constant over variable is that most of the existing discussion on the web uses ‘CSS Constants’ as the term to describe this concept, I find it helps if you give someone a phrase they can search on and get results.
@ Douglas – thanks for the link to the article, that’s another useful resource for this.
Rachel Andrew
A ‘constant’ is a fixed value that cannot be changed at run-time – if the values you are setting are fixed as in the examples above then I think constant is the correct term. If you are allowing them to be altered by the user – for example dynamically setting a background color – then you would be correct in calling them variables. My primary reason for using the word constant over variable is that most of the existing discussion on the web uses ‘CSS Constants’ as the term to describe this concept, I find it helps if you give someone a phrase they can search on and get results.
@ Douglas – thanks for the link to the article, that’s another useful resource for this.