I commonly make quick demo pages or websites with simple content. For these, I don't want to spend time styling them but don't like the ugliness of the default styles.
Water.css is a CSS framework that doesn't require any classes. You just include it in your `<head>` and forget about it, while it silently makes everything nicer.
Although it originally wasn't built for more complex websites, many developers have used Water.css as a base stylesheet and creatively applied custom styles to build out an entire app. Nothing is stopping you from doing the same!
The main `water.css` file automatically switches between light and dark mode depending on the system preferences of a user's device. This detection is made possible through a CSS media query called [`prefers-color-scheme`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-color-scheme). In browsers where the preference can't be detected, `water.css` will stick to the light theme.
If you want to avoid this behavior, use either `dark.css` or `light.css`.
All three distributions of Water.css support Internet Explorer 11, but the main `water.css` file **doesn't respect the user's color scheme** and will be locked to light mode due to lack of `prefers-color-scheme` support.
Be aware that IE also doesn't support [runtime theming](#theming), and fixed fallback values will be used. If you want to override the Water.css theme in a way that's compatible with IE, we recommend that you [compile your own theme](#compiling-your-own-theme).
Do you want to make some adjustments or build your own theme completely different from the official dark or light themes? Since Water.css is built with CSS variables this is super easy to do! Here's a list list of all the variables you can change to your liking:
Water.css uses Custom Properties (_"CSS variables"_) to define its base styles such as colors. These can be changed and overwritten right in the browser.
Because of this, you can simply add your own stylesheet to the page and set your own CSS variables there. As long as your stylesheet comes after Water.css in the HTML, your values will override the default ones and your theme is applied!
If you are targeting browsers without support for CSS Custom Properties such as Internet Explorer, runtime theming is not an option. To apply your own theming, you'll need to make your changes in the source files themselves, then re-compile the CSS files. This works like the following:
You also might want to check out the [Contributing Guide](https://github.com/kognise/water.css/tree/master/.github/CONTRIBUTING.md) as it contains further information about the build setup.
If you decide to contribute, after downloading a copy of the repository make sure to run `yarn` to install dependencies useful for development. Then, you can run the following to start a server of the demo with live reloading on change.
**Alternatively, just click this button to develop in Repl.it, a supercool in-browser IDE!** [](https://repl.it/github/kognise/water.css)
Before submitting your first pull request, make sure to check out our [Contributing Guide](https://github.com/kognise/water.css/tree/master/.github/CONTRIBUTING.md)!
