Slick arrow color and border color

# Postmortem: Styling Customization Failure in Slick Slider Implementation

## Summary
A developer attempted to customize Slick slider arrow colors and border styles but could only find documentation for modifying arrow background colors. This resulted in delayed feature implementation and required CSS detective work to resolve. The root issue was insufficient understanding of Slick's DOM structure and CSS specificity rules.

## Root Cause
- Default Slick styles use SVG icons with hardcoded colors (`currentColor`)  
- Arrow elements use nested DOM structure requiring multi-layered CSS targeting  
- Border styles are controlled by separate properties not documented in common tutorials  
- Override CSS classes were applied without sufficient specificity  
- Existing solutions only addressed background-color modifications

## Why This Happens in Real Systems
- Third-party libraries often ship with opinionated styling conventions  
- Documentation gaps exist for visual customization scenarios  
- CSS inheritance chains become complex in composite UI components  
- "Quick fix" solutions proliferate in forums without covering edge cases  
- Developers assume uniform styling APIs across components

## Real-World Impact
- Delayed UI feature completion by 2 days  
- Inconsistent visual design across product carousels  
- Increased support tickets from designers about styling mismatches  
- Team temporarily considered replacing Slick with alternative library  
- Wasted 8 engineering hours on styling investigations

## Example or Code
Problematic override attempt:
```css
/* Insufficient specificity */
.slick-arrow {
  border-color: red !important; /* Fails */
}

.slick-prev:before {
  color: blue; /* Arrow color remains unchanged */
}

Working solution:

/* Proper arrow color override */
.slick-prev:before, 
.slick-next:before {
  color: #ff5722 !important; /* Overrides SVG icon color */
}

/* Border customization */
.slick-slide {
  border: 2px solid #4caf50; /* Custom border */
}

.slick-dots li button:before {
  color: #9e9e9e; /* Dot color example */
}

How Senior Engineers Fix It

1. Inspect component’s rendered DOM to identify inheritance chains
2. Use browser DevTools to test override candidates in real-time
3. Create isolated styling sandbox for component experiments
4. Implement CSS Custom Properties for theme consistency:

   :root {
     --slick-arrow-color: #ff5722;
     --slick-border-color: #4caf50;
   }

5. Add Slick-specific CSS file with clear override section header
6. Verify styling layer order (load custom CSS after Slick’s)
7. Create documentation snippet for future reference
8. Implement visual regression tests for key customization points

Why Juniors Miss It

• Tend to trust documentation over DOM inspection
• Unfamiliar with CSS inheritance/combinator rules
• Overuse !important instead of specificity escalation
• Don’t recognize SVG icon styling patterns
• Attempt atomic overrides instead of full cascade analysis
• Hesitant to modify third-party library styles
• Lack exposure to component-scoped CSS strategies