1997: geez the browser makes some dull or terrible decisions about presentation and we want to control our site's presentation
2005: OK but semantic web and CSS tho'
2013: JavaScript all the things!
2015: whoever thought the semantic web was a decent idea, the browser is THE VM, CSS is teh sux0rs, when can I just treat it like a compile target like every other kind of development
2018: oh hai what if we invented some way to let users control how they see the content of a website
This is one of the reasons that I'm a bit wary of using extensions for handling these kinds of needs. It might be different if there were a permissions model that didn't seem to require "Read and change all your data on the websites you visit" for most useful extensions.
Better user stylesheet support in the browser seems safer.
1997: geez the browser makes some dull or terrible decisions about presentation and we want to control our site's presentation
2005: OK but semantic web and CSS tho'
2013: JavaScript all the things!
2015: whoever thought the semantic web was a decent idea, the browser is THE VM, CSS is teh sux0rs, when can I just treat it like a compile target like every other kind of development
2018: oh hai what if we invented some way to let users control how they see the content of a website