Native CSS Variables == Yes
This is only a good thing. There is absolutely nothing bad about this. While many designers may not be programmers, CSS is code. After writing enough of it, even a “non-programmer” will understand that the benefits—succinctness and flexibility—far outweigh the cost of learning additional syntax.
I believe the verbosity of the proposed syntax is there by necessity. CSS must be efficient: the more hints you can give the parser the more efficient it will be. Plus, it needs to be safely ignored by browsers that don’t support it, so it can’t “overlap” with the normal syntax.
Anyway, typed variables will be a godsend. Can’t wait for five years from now when it will be practical to use this instead of a preprocessor like Less.
