So as has become fairly common practice we are using css content to position text that is really "style" specific. eg
.label:after { content: ":"; }
it was pointed out to me however that this sort of thing varies in certain cultures. Uh oh.
Does anyone have a good pattern for dealing with this sort of thing since CSS files are not typically passed through an asp.net processor and therefore have no access to the resources files.
I really like this question so I thought about it a bit. Would this be a good approach for you?
<label data-after=":">Name</label>
Then, in your CSS you can do:
label:after {
content: attr(data-after);
}
Here's a quick demo of it:
http://jsbin.com/iYEKOH/1/edit?html,css,output
It should be pretty easy to polyfill for browsers that don't support it using Modernizr. I think it would add a no-generatedcontent class.
Another though... How about this approach?
html label:after { content: '' }
html[lang=en] label:after { content: ':' }
How about this approach? It'll let you switch it up based on the lang attribute.
html label:after { content: '' }
html[lang=en] label:after { content: ':' }
If I were doing this in PHP (the scripting language is not critical, just affects the implementation details), I would set up CSS files that contains all the rules that depend on the localization.
For example, local-en.css, local-fr.css and so on.
In my site template(s), I would check my localization flag and then load or link to the appropriate CSS file taking into account the order of the files to make sure that all the CSS rules cascade correctly.
Related
Since I am pretty bad at graphic design and my CSS skills are not so good, I usually buy pure HTML/CSS templates to start new (small) websites.
The problem is that usually these templates are bloated with unused JS/CSS or, at the opposite end, they use only a subset of open source icon packs for example.
So I usually have CSS files with this (of course, just an example):
.icon-email2:before {
content: "\e662";
}
.icon-heart2:before {
content: "\e663";
}
.icon-enter:before {
content: "\e664";
}
.icon-cloud1:before {
content: "\e665";
}
.icon-book2:before {
content: "\e666";
}
.icon-star2:before {
content: "\e667";
}
Is there an easy way to print a table with "css name / icon" for ALL the styles defined in that CSS file? So I can visually see what I have and especially what I don't have.
I can (with PHP) build a parser to generate the corresponding HTML file, but I was wondering if there is a nicer, cleaner, faster option in JS and/or CSS itself.
I'm setting up a single instance single database multi-tenant application. The backend is written in Ruby on Rails, while the frontend is a separate app in AngularJS with a Rails framework.
I'm using a resolve on an abstract parent state to determine the subdomain, and subsequently the tenant. Once the tenant is determined, I want to be able to read CSS variable values from a config file on the front-end that can then be used to generate the main styles.css file that contains the classes referenced in the rest of the project.
I've heard that CSS pre-processors like Sass and Less can be used to accomplish this, but I have no experience with either and I'm stuck trying to figure out exactly how to set this up.
Some help / code examples would be appreciated - thanks!
Sass or Less won't really do what you want because they are compiled in advance of the browser loading them. In other words, the browser only loads the compiled css file.
There are however a few methods of achieving your goal. I'm not familiar with Ruby, so I'll try to keep my server language suggestions generic. These are obviously not meant as full solutions because I don't know your full situation. Instead these are just some ideas to give you some leads.
Probably the best method would be to use server logic to apply a different class to the body tag, then use that class to determine what styles are applied to the page. So for example:
/* probably a good idea to have fallback styles */
body {
color: black;
background: white;
}
body.style-one p {
color: red;
background: blue;
}
body.style-two p {
color: blue;
background: red;
}
<body class="style-one">
<p>This text will be red.</p>
You could also, of course, change the class of the body tag using javascript, and therefore the user could change the theme of the page.
Alternatively, you could use similar server logic to write out a secondary <link rel="stylesheet"...> tag to pull in one or another stylesheet. The real advantage here is that if you a large number of rules for the various themes, you can keep them nicely separate in their own files.
One last method I've used (with php) is to create the stylesheet on the fly based on GET variables, but print out the stylesheet as a css file. The downside of this method is that I think you lose some browser caching advantage. In any case, that might look something like this:
<?php
header("Content-Type: text/css");
if( $_GET['theme'] == 'one' ) {
echo 'p { color: red; }';
} else {
echo 'p { color: blue; }';
}
?>
a {
color: green;
}
<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css.php?theme=one">
I have three big CSS files which have many classes. Same of those classes have the same name but are in different files.
Example:
CSS1:
...
.btn-primary {
background: #000;
}
...
CSS2:
...
.btn-primary {
background: #fff;
}
...
and CSS3:
...
.btn-primary {
background: #4285F4;
}
...
Let's assume that all three CSS are called in my HTML page.
Is there a way to select in my web page only the .btn-primary class from CSS3? If yes, how could I do it?
No.
If a stylesheet is loaded into a page, and it has a ruleset with selector that matches an element, then it will apply to that element.
Rules which provide conflicting information for a particular property will overwrite each other in the standard cascade order.
Not as is, but you could alter your style sheets so that it reads like this:
.btn-primary, .btn-primary.style1 { ... }
.btn-primary, .btn-primary.style2 { ... }
.btn-primary, .btn-primary.style3 { ... }
Then you could get the specific styles by using the following class:
<a class='btn-primary style2'>Stylesheet 2</a>
In short, you'll need to add some sort of additional method of narrowing down the different styles.
--
Another possibility would be to convert your css files to scss like so:
.style1 {
.btn-primary { ... }
}
You could then use the styling from specific sheets like so:
<div class='style1'>
<a class='btn-primary'>Stylesheet 1</a>
</div>
An apologetic into: the following is, in my opinion, a wrong solution. I wanted to add it as I can think of situations where you have to find this kind of hacky ways rather than change the css files.
Generally speaking, as Quentin and Bryant pointed out - there is no "namespacing" for css files and so if you load all the css files you will end up with the last overriding file's selector classes (among the name-conflicted ones) and won't be able to choose between them.
If (for some odd reason) you don't care about Chrome users - you can probably use the cssRules or rules properties of the document.styleSheets[i] object - for each loaded stylesheet file (i being the number of the file). As noted, this method does not work for Chrome. Fore some reason both cssRules and rules are null in Chrome for each of the styleSheets[i].
My hacky solution:
After loading all the css files as you need,
In javascript code, read the css file you choose as a text file. You can use AJAX for that - see this question and its answers
Search for the selector you want in the text you got and extract that string. You can parse the whole file for example and take the relevant part.
In searching how to help with this step I came across the document.styleSheets[i].cssRules object and the method that doesn't work in Chrome.
Build a style element around it and append that style element to the head element (here's an answer that shows how to create and append style elements to the head element).
This seems like a wrong way to do it from several reasons (performance, elegance, readability) - and probably means the design of the css files is not right for your project (look at Bryant's suggestions) - but I wanted this answer to be here, as there is a way to do it, albeit a hacky one, and if for some reason you can't change the css files and have to use them as is - then here you go.
I don't know what is the usage of this, I mean having three files and storing different styles and even same styles into them.
But there are some tools that will normalize and minify your CSS, for example, take a look at Nano CSS
But, as other answers says it is not possible to say what class from what file apply to this page, and they will overwrite and the last style will apply for the element.
Here is also an example to find out how overwrite works:
#test-link {
display: block;
text-decoration: none;
background: red;
color: white;
}
#test-link {
background: green;
}
#test-link {
background: orange;
}
#test-link {
background: black;
}
<a id="test-link" href="javascript:void(0);">Test link</a>
As you see, just the last style applied for the background color
We are using a framework that allow us to modify the color scheme use throughout the application. I cannot play a lot with the color and would like to reuse them in some classes. So let say that the framework define this class
.StyleFromFramework {
color:#515151;
background-color: #FFFFFF;
}
is located in a css file that I can't modify cause this file is handled by the framework (if I modified this file, all my modification will be lost when the new version of the framework is installed)
I would like to reuse the color of this classes in another class in a file containing all my updates.
.NewStyle {
color: **.StyleFromFramework:color**
Font: Verdan 11 px;
}
Is there a way to do that ?
I would try the following.
.StyleFromFramework, .NewStyle {
color:#515151;
}
.StyleFromFramework {
background-color: #FFFFFF;
}
.NewStyle {
background-color: none; /* or some other value... */
}
The first rule shares the color, and the the other two rules specify properties that are specific to the two other classes.
You should take a look at less.css which does exactly what you're looking for.
perhaps I didn't understand you correctly, but CSS is not dynamic language in which you can reuse rules and components.
I would recommend to use SASS/SCSS framework or something similar (LESS, Stylus... etc.)
In those frameworks, This is one of the most useful features, lets you share a set of CSS properties from one selector to another
read more here: http://sass-lang.com
Using a CSS preprocessor like Sass, Less or Stylus allows the use of variables which then can be reused in your project.
Foundation for instance can be completely restyled with Sass.
I just finished a medium sized web site and one thing I noticed about my css organization was that I have a lot of hard coded colour values throughout. This obviously isn't great for maintainability. Generally, when I design a site I pick 3-5 main colours for a theme. I end up setting some default values for paragraphs, links, etc... at the beginning of my main css, but some components will change the colour (like the legend tag for example) and require me to restyle with the colour I wanted. How do you avoid this? I was thinking of creating separate rules for each colour and just use those when I need to restyle.
i.e.
.color1 {
color: #3d444d;
}
One thing I've done here is break out my palette declarations from other style/layout markup, grouping commonly-colored items in lists, e.g.
h1 {
padding...
margin...
font-family...
}
p {
...
}
code {
...
}
/* time passes */
/* these elements are semantically grouped by color in the design */
h1, p, code {
color: #ff0000;
}
On preview, JeeBee's suggestion is a logical extension of this: if it makes sense to handle your color declarations (and, of course, this can apply to other style issues, though color has the unique properties of not changing layout), you might consider pushing it out to a separate css file, yeah. This makes it easier to hot-swap color-only thematic variations, too, by just targeting one or another colorxxx.css profile as your include.
That's exactly what you should do.
The more centralized you can make your css, the easier it will be to make changes in the future. And let's be serious, you will want to change colors in the future.
You should almost never hard-code any css into your html, it should all be in the css.
Also, something I have started doing more often is to layer your css classes on eachother to make it even easier to change colors once... represent everywhere.
Sample (random color) css:
.main_text {color:#444444;}
.secondary_text{color:#765123;}
.main_color {background:#343434;}
.secondary_color {background:#765sda;}
Then some markup, notice how I am using the colors layer with otehr classes, that way I can just change ONE css class:
<body class='main_text'>
<div class='main_color secondary_text'>
<span class='secondary color main_text'>bla bla bla</span>
</div>
<div class='main_color secondary_text>
You get the idea...
</div>
</body>
Remember... inline css = bad (most of the time)
See: Create a variable in .CSS file for use within that .CSS file
To summarize, you have three basic option:
Use a macro pre-processor to replace constant color names in your stylesheets.
Use client-side scripting to configure styles.
Use a single rule for every color, listing all selectors for which it should apply (my fav...)
I sometimes use PHP, and make the file something like style.css.php.
Then you can do this:
<?php
header("Content-Type: text/css");
$colour1 = '#ff9';
?>
.username {color: <?=$colour1;?>; }
Now you can use that colour wherever you want, and only have to change it in one place. This also works for values other then colours of course.
Maybe pull all the color information into one part of your stylesheet. For example change this:
p .frog tr.mango {
color: blue;
margin: 1px 3em 2.5em 4px;
position: static;
}
#eta .beta span.pi {
background: green;
color: red;
font-size: small;
float: left;
}
// ...
to this:
p .frog tr.mango {
color: blue;
}
#eta .beta span.pi {
background: green;
color: red;
}
//...
p .frog tr.mango {
margin: 1px 3em 2.5em 4px;
position: static;
}
#eta .beta span.pi {
font-size: small;
float: left;
}
// ...
You could have a colours.css file with just the colours/images for each tag in.
Then you can change the colours just by replacing the file, or having a dynamically generated CSS file, or having different CSS files available and selecting based upon website URL/subfolder/property/etc.
Or you can have colour tags as you write, but then your HTML turns into:
<p style="body grey">Blah</p>
CSS should have a feature where you can define values for things like colours that you wish to be consistent through a style but are defined in one place only. Still, there's search and replace.
So you're saying you don't want to go back into your CSS to change color values if you find another color 'theme' that might work better?
Unfortunately, I don't see a way around this. CSS defines styles, and with color being one of them, the only way to change it is to go into the css and change it.
Of course, you could build yourself a little program that will allow you to change the css file by picking a color wheel on a webpage or something, which will then write that value into the css file using the filesystemobject or something, but that's a lot more work than required for sure.
Generally it's better to just find and replace the colours you are changing.
Anything more powerful than that will be more complex with few benefits.
CSS is not your answer. You want to look into an abstraction on top of CSS like SASS. This will allow you to define constants and generally clean up your css.
Here is a list of CSS Frameworks.
I keep a list of all the colors I've used at the top of the file.
When the CSS is served by a server-side script, eg. PHP, usually coders make the CSS as a template file and substitute the colors at run-time. This might be used to let users choose a color model, too.
Another way, to avoid parsing this file each time (although cache should take care of that), or just if you have a static site, is to make such template and parse it with some script/static template engine before uploading to the server.
Search/replace can work, except when two initially distinct colors end up being the same: hard to separate them again after that! :-)
If I am not mistaken, CSS3 should allow such parametrization. But I won't hold my breath until this feature will be available in 90% of browsers surfing the Net!
I like the idea of separating the colour information into a separate file, no matter how I do it. I would accept multiple answers here if I could, because I like Josh Millard's as well. I like the idea of having separate colour rules though because a particular tag might have different colours depending on where it occurs. Maybe a combination of both of these techniques would be good:
h1, p, code {
color: #ff0000;
}
and then also have
.color1 {
color: #ff0000;
}
for when you need to restyle.
This is where SASS comes to help you.