One of the things I find hard to work with in CSS is how rules mix layout (ie: position, sizing) and look and feel (color, shadows, fonts, etc.).
We're working in a 'reskin' project, where we want to keep the layout of our solution, but change the look and feel. To this end I'm thinking of splitting the current styles in two: one stylesheet for layout and the other for skin, and then replace the latter with the new, reskinned one.
Just to illustrate my point. A current CSS rule could look like this:
Styles.css:
.my-class {
/* layout rules */
width: 100px;
height: 50px;
float: left;
/* look and feel rules */
border: 1px solid red;
font-weight: bold;
}
My idea would be to split this into 2 individual rules, in 2 files:
Layout.css:
.my-class {
width: 100px;
height: 50px;
float: left;
}
Skin.css: (could be replaced with a different 'skin' file)
.my-class {
border: 1px solid red;
font-weight: bold;
}
Is there any reason why this would not work? Does this have any drawbacks (other than the increased page load time?)
If you have a clear way of separating the CSS you can do it this way. In our company it is separated the same way, you just have to pay attention when adding new CSS so you don't mix it up.
There is no increase in page load time, when you use PHP to merge the files together and minimize it when the user visits your website.
Check out this link, there is an explanation on how to combine and minify CSS with PHP.
Related
I am looking to improve the style of a Wordpress site.
I have a div with the group-input class which has this style:
.group-input {
display: inline-block;
margin-bottom: 0px;
float: right;
padding-left: 10px;
text-align: right;
}
I would like that below 572 px of screen we switch to float : left so I wrote this below the previous code, in my theme's CSS file, like this:
.group-input {
display: inline-block;
margin-bottom: 0px;
float: right;
padding-left: 10px;
text-align: right;
}
#media (max-width: 572px) {
.group-input {
float: left !important;
}
}
On the other hand it does not work, the new style does not apply to my div.
suddenly I don't know how to do it. Do you have an idea, a lead to advise me?
I want some explanations, something simple for you is not necessarily obvious to me suddenly I need to understand. Thanks for your time and help.
In general, that should overwrite the css rule you are trying to do, but it's probably another css rule that more specifically targets that element. A few reasons it may not be overwriting is because:
another css rule is more specific than yours
it's in a breakpoint more specific than yours
it uses !important
A combo of all of those will require you to be even more specific in targeting the element.
If you find you are unable to overwrite a rule, try and be more specific in your targeting of the element by targeting it's grandparent/parent and working down the html tree. If you notice that that isn't working either, then try using !important.
Check the html structure around it try that. Sometimes even body .group-input might be specific enough, but the closer you specify to the element, the better off you will be.
So I made a small change on the page (gesher-jds.org/giving):
Donate Now, Pay Later
to
Donate Now, Pay Later
and now the design of the right calculator has changed (more like the button as I see). How do I fix it? Both of them looked the same (besides the text). I tried to add the code below to the CSS but it still didn't work. What I'm doing wrong?
CSS
a#payLater {
background: #60426c;
width: 100%;
display: inline-block;
margin-top: 20px;
padding: 10px;
text-align: center;
color: #fff !important;
font-size: 20px;
text-transform: uppercase;
letter-spacing: 1px;
font-weight: bold;
text-decoration: none !important;
}
If you apply the styling in the dev tools it works like expected. The reason it does not work in your working environment is probably because your styles are overwritten by different styles. Check the dev tools to see which styles are applied
Potential fixes:
1) Tidy up the "!important" rules.
2) Build stronger selectors -> keyword to look for knowledge [CSS Specificity]
If you set !important in one CSS rule, it'll become hard to overwrite that because !important = 1000 Specificity points so the rule is really strong
i am kinda new to LESS, but already can see it's huge power of building huge design frameworks / systems.
I'll try to reduce my question as simple as i can, and hopefully i will got lucky with some help!
So, let's say i have build Framework (something like Bootstrap 3), that have a lot of own components, which have their own rules, variables to base etc. And than i have theme which of course can overwrite those variables to change style.
But what if i need to add some specific rules, which haven't been presented before?
// FRAMEWORK
#btn-font-size: 12px;
#btn-line-height: 1;
#btn-border: 3px;
.some-component .menu > .btn {
font-size: #btn-font-size;
line-height: #btn-line-height;
border: #btn-border solid transparent;
}
// HERE STARTS MY THEME
#btn-font-size: 16px;
#btn-border: 6px;
.some-component .menu > .btn {
margin-bottom: 12px;
letter-spacing: 0.3px;
background: #FFFFFF;
}
And you would ask, so what's the problem here? You should just get what you want with this approach.
But problem lays in my intention to build optimized code, which would be lot less in size, more readable, logical and won't ruin some of dependencies (so for some complex components i won't have to do some additional edits, just to add few things).
In plain simple words, i want it to compile like that:
// FRAMEWORK
.some-component .menu > .btn {
font-size: 16px;
line-height: 1;
border: 6px solid transparent;
margin-bottom: 12px;
letter-spacing: 0.3px;
background: #FFFFFF;
}
So the idea is to extend framework, not to overwrite classes.
To do so i was trying all kinds of mixins, extends, variables with rulsets etc, which ain't seem to help or to be enough specific.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated, because there seem to be no native LESS solution, but maybe some tricks?)
Also see: How to keep duplicate properties in compiled CSS file when use LESS?
Since Less v2 you should use the Less Clean CSS plugin to compress the css output from Less using clean-css.
Clean-css will merge your properties automatically.
Compiling your code with lessc --clean-css code.less outputs:
.some-component .menu>.btn{font-size:16px;line-height:1;border:6px solid transparent;margin-bottom:12px;letter-spacing:.3px;background:FFFFFF}
Question: Is the second OOCSS principle really valid?
According to the OOCSS second principle you're not supposed to have location dependent styles:
Quote from https://github.com/stubbornella/oocss/wiki
Essentially, this means “rarely use location-dependent styles”. An object should look the same no matter where you put it. So instead of styling a specific h2 with .myObject h2 {...}, create and apply a class that describes the h2 in question, like h2 class="category".
Lets take a practical example of this. Say I have a standard 2.0 setup with a normal body (white background) and a huge footer (black background). In the body we have black links and in the footer of course we need white. Isn't the simplest and most intuitive way to achieve this simply to:
a{ color: #000; }
.footer a{ color: #FFF; }
If I where to follow OOCSS principles I'd have to first create a class:
.inverted{ color: #FFF; }
Then proceed to add that class to every link I want inverted. That seems like a hassle.
Isn't the purpose of the whole language that styles are made to Cascade?
Am I misunderstanding something here?
I think you are right in the sense that yes, in your specific example.. perhaps doing it your way would be easier. But then again, if you look at the first sentence in the OOCSS page:
How do you scale CSS for thousands of pages?
In that context.. the second principle makes perfect sense.. so using your same example (ie let's assume we implemented your solution).. let's say that a year down the road your company decides to create light grey buttons in the black footer having black text:
<!-- inside footer -->
<a class="button lightGrey">link</a>
in this case.. all the a tags will be white because they're covered by your cascading. So then we will have to go create another sytle just to undo what your solution did:
.footer a.button.lightGrey {
color: #000; /* huh? but i thought we did this before with a {color: #000;} ?*/
}
where as if we simply made a decision that all a tags by default are black (see last note):
a{ color: #000; }
then in the footer we will create a special type of link that are supposed to be white:
.footerLinks { color: #FFF }
then a year later some of the links are still white.. others within the greyLight button will be black:
<a class="button lightGrey">link</a>
then here we don't have to worry about undoing anything.. a tags have a default color.. and that's it. if 2 years later someone decides that the links inside the lightGrey buttons (anywhere on the site, not only withen the footer.. which is the whole point of OOCSS) should be red.. then this would be the OOCSS approach:
.redLink {
color: red;
}
and the html will be
<a class="button lightGrey redLink">link</a>
in this case it won't matter if we take out the .lightGrey class, or we can have this code within or not within a footer .. it's all the same.. it results in more predictable and re-usable code.. which is OOCSS (I'm very glad that they're finally formalising this.. thanks a lot for the post btw).
One last note: To be pure OOCSS, one shouldn't change the default color of a ie a {color: #000;} is wrong!, it should be left to it's default color (which is blue).. whenever anyone wants to change that color.. then they must specify it ie
<a class="redLink">..</a>
so in this case it's more like the default a is the parent class.. and everything else subclasses it and overrides its default behaviour..
update - response to comments:
reputable site argument:
such initiatives are almost always driven by the community then adopted by reputable companies.. and even when they are adopted by larger companies it usually happens from the bottom up through enthusiastic developers who advocate for such change.. I for one was such an advocate when I was working in Amazon. And even when it's adopted.. it's usually at a small scale and not across all units in the org. it wouldn't even be a good idea for the Googles and the Amazons and the facebooks etc to enforce such a rule b/c there will always be a difference of opinion.. not to mention that such micromanagement would constrain the engineer's creativity.. there could be a guideline in a wiki for a team (ie we had one for the Amazon Kindle Touch app store) but to enforce that rule across 10,000 engineers working across the company wouldn't be practical nor desirable.
So in short if you see value in OOCSS, and start implementing on your site, and advocating it to your fellow web devs, and then it becomes a trend, that's when it eventually becomes an industry wide best practice and that's when you can expect to see it on facebook etc.
example:
take a look at this:
simple: http://jsfiddle.net/64sBg/
a bit more detailed: http://jsfiddle.net/64sBg/2/
without going too much detail (I'm sure you will see the pattern) you can see that the granularity in css descriptions allows for subtle changes without any redundancy in style definition. So notice the left arrow vs right arrow.. also the .red and .blue styles can be subsequently applied to tables etc..
also notice that there isn't a single cascading in my css.. so my styles can be completely independently applied (ie implementing the rule An object should look the same no matter where you put it)
lastly.. there is still use for cascading.. you can definitely use it in your jQuery selectors for example.. also cascading happens by default (ie without you having to explicitly set it in your css styles).. so if you take look at the css below.. you will notice that the font properties of body has cascaded down to all the buttons.
<a class="button blue dark">
<div class=" arrowDownWhite rightArrow">Analytics</div>
</a>
<a class="button red dark">
<div class=" arrowDownWhite leftArrow">Actions</div>
</a>
<a class="button grey light">
<div class=" arrowDownRed leftArrow">options</div>
</a>
and css:
body
{
font-family: Trebuchet MS,Liberation Sans,DejaVu Sans,sans-serif;
font-size: 15pt;
}
.button
{
padding: .5em 1em;
display: inline-block;
text-decoration: none;
}
.dark {
color: white;
}
.light{
color: #E40E62;
}
.blue
{
background-color: #51C8E8;
}
.red
{
background-color: #E40E62;
}
.grey
{
background-color: #E0E0E0 ;
}
.arrowDownWhite
{
background-image:url(http://s2.postimage.org/ywam7ec4l/small_Arrow_Down_White.png);
background-repeat:no-repeat;
}
.arrowDownRed
{
background-image:url(http://s2.postimage.org/je5743t2d/small_Arrow_Down_Red.png);
background-repeat:no-repeat;
}
.leftArrow
{
padding-left: 1em;
background-position: left center;
}
.rightArrow
{
padding-right: 1em;
background-position: right center;
}
It is worth the hassle of separating your skin from the container.
Lets look beyond colors. I wish Nicole Sullivan provided better examples than she does. I have 23 web sites that an contain
Menus
Tabs
Toolbars
Horizontal and Vertical Lists of Links
All of them are Skins of the Nav abstraction
I started off created an abstraction class to handle the common code between all of them. I added a few modifiers to change the orientation from horizontal to vertical, and also the floated position of it. I kept all colors out of the abstraction as well as css rules that can change based on the skin I apply to it.
/* Object */
.nav
{
margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: 0; padding-left: 0; list-style: none;
}
/* Modifier */
.nav--stack .nav__item
{
display: block;
}
.nav--right
{
float: right;
}
/* Elements */
.nav__item
{
float:left
}
.nav__item__link
{
display:none;
}
Menu Skin
I needed a skin that made the .nav abstraction look like a sidebar menu. In case you are wondering, I did not put the padding for .nav_item_link above is because it can change based on the skin. The tabs skin has it set for 2px.
/* Object */
.menu
{
}
/* Elements */
.menu .nav__item--current.nav__item__link
{
color: #fff; background: blue;
}
.menu .nav__item__link
{
padding: 4px; border-radius: 4px;
}
.menu .nav__item__link:hover
{
background: #eee
}
Notice to keep things location-independent - I have 0 tag names. I don't style li and a children on .nav like bootstrap does. This code could be used on dls or even divs and has better performance based on how selector engines read rules.
To me the benefit of just having to skin the objects I have for all 23 sites I have is worth any hassle.
Ok, a really quick question - which is the best way out of these to apply css styles:
1 - Use lots of different classes that apply different parts of the style i.e. class='font-1 red-bkg border-1' etc etc.
Or
2 - Style up individual parts of the site seperately
What you should do for font for example is to apple it to body, same for background colour, font colour etc...
body{font: Verdana 38px; color: #000; background: #fff;}
Then for individual features (e.g. margins, padding, borders etc) they should be defined in a per-class way.
.classname {
margin: 0px 5px 10px 5px;
padding: 10px 5px 10px 6px;
}
It is better for maintainability and makes your HTML less messy.
I believe to justify shared classes you should have more than one property in it, otherwise you are not gaining anything from using CSS's modularity.
I.e. things like this are not good ideas:
.bold { font-weight: bold; }
Style up individual parts of the site seperately. The other solution would kind of screw the intention behind it - separating content from styling.
Seems like you will enjoy this read, I certainly did:
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/html-css-techniques/30-css-best-practices-for-beginners/
You should name logically classes, because when you change your layout and currently you have style like
.bold .5px-brd .red.bg
then changing this to another colour and style will include grep'ing through entire application code in order to correct css styles.
As you may notice approach like
.bold .5px-brd .red.bg
it's good, and don't go with philosophy of CSS.
Classes with name like
.bold
should be used as auxiliary style. Never as basic construction block.
http://jsfiddle.net/sheriffderek/RMfEn/
html
<section class='container blocks'>
<h2>Blocks of content</h2>
<div class='block highlight-theme'>
<p>None of the styling should be done in the html.</p>
</div>
<div class='block base-theme'>
<p>You can use modular classes to style common pieces of the layout and then modify them with more specific classes.</p>
</div>
<div class='block contrast-theme'>
<p>So the stuff in this box could be a dark-theme with .contrast-theme or something</p>
</div>
</section>
css
.container, .block { /* structural elements */
width: 100%;
float; left;
padding: .5rem;
overflow: hidden; /* use a clear-fix instead */
}
/* mini themes /// mix and match */
.base-theme {
background: lightgray;
color: black;
}
.highlight-theme {
background: yellow;
color: red;
}
.contrast-theme {
background: gray;
color: white;
}