The website I work for has a lot of overly complex pages. If I was able to use box-sizing on them my job would be made significantly easier in a number of respects. However, before I can just roll up and use box-sizing I need to convince the powers that be that using it does not create a noticeable degradation in page performance.
Now, the page they care about the most is a whopping 2.5 MB of resources (images, HTML, CSS, JS, etc) and the .htc file I'd need to upload is around 4 kb. So 0.0016% of the total file size. No problem there.
However, while this won't add any real rendering overhead to all the modern browsers, it will to IE6 and IE7 due to their needing to reference this behavior file.
The issue is, how do I test the page performance difference caused by using this behavior file?
I tried the CSS Stress Test but after it tested the 500+ other rules already applied to the page it only displayed a scant few results and not one related to the one I actually wanted.
Ideas?
The stress test I used was:
andy.edinborough.org/CSS-Stress-Testing-and-Performance-Profiling
I could not find a single IE+CSS performance tool to cover ie7/ie6.
What I can tell you from my experience using .htc files, namely csspie...is that you want to look at it from a js perspective, not css.
Having said that, to test js performance on ie6/ie7, try these:
DYNATRACE: http://ajax.dynatrace.com/pages/
COMPANION JS: http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/CompanionJS/HomePage
FIREBUG LITE: http://getfirebug.com/firebuglite
DEBUG BAR: http://www.debugbar.com/
I'm afraid I can't be more specific given there's no 'sample' live file to work with provided in your original post. Hope this helps.
Regards
G
What are the best ways to use LESS for CSS.
Basically should the Devs write a Less File and then have it compile for production
Should I link the LESS code and the javascript file.
Or should I skip the LESS rout altogether and just remake the classes
I am trying to wrangle together some rather sloppy css and want to get control of it before making major improvements. I think it would be very good to have site wide variable so Less seems like a good thing with the variables and nesting.
I am replacing a lot of the background images with css gradients and box shadows so I am also trying to get rid of the vendor prefixes.
Sometimes I see what kindof looks like class overload but is it bad to append a lot of classes to an element such as
<div class="comment dark-shadow round-corners"></div>
Less is a great styling language. I use it extensively, and it really helps with code maintainability, as well as with speed of writing the styles.
I personally feel that your styles should not be dependent on javascript to render, so I use the less.app to compile all my LESS into CSS. I rest more peacefully knowing that all my CSS is there and that it works correctly before I put anything "live".
If you are interested I have also been compiling a LESS mixin library that can be very useful: https://github.com/jdmiller82/-lessins-
I agree with Jonathan, I don't think you should depend on the users browser to render the styles.
I came up with a solution that uses node.js on the server to intercept requests like styles.css and try to find the equivalent .less file (in this case styles.less) and parse it and return it as CSS.
So on your server you would just have styles.less but you could request the URL example.com/styles.css and get the parsed LESS file. That way the integration is seamless for the rest of your application and it doesn't require the user has JavaScript enabled either.
You don't have to be using node.js for the rest of your app either. I did this in a PHP application.
You can read my tutorial here: http://programming-perils.com/155/parse-less-files-on-the-fly-and-serve-them-as-css/
I realize this answer is about two years later than the above ones but I think the question is still relevant.
I think there are use cases where compiling some LESS client side is a good idea (provided you aren't supporting IE 8 or below) and you have a use case that validates it. For example, an application I've worked on recently has a customizable, theme-able interface where text colors, etc need to be modified based on whether the background color they're on is light or dark and may eventually need to support the ability for the user to change them and see those changes reflected on the site in realtime. This is a great use case for client side LESS I think. Note that only a small LESS stylesheet is compiled and the rest of the application LESS that's not related to theming is precompiled. I haven't seen much of a perceived difference in performance.
So when you see comments like "you don't seriously think any decent developer uses less clientside do you?", I'd take them with a grain of salt.
The way to use LESS for a production website is to compile LESS files into CSS files.
For local development you can have a file-watcher that rebuilds the CSS files for LESS files that were changed.
If you have multiple CSS files to produce from LESS, you should separate them out.
For example, if you have 30 less files and they produce two CSS files a.css and b.css, you will want to separate those two jobs so that you can compile faster. It's faster for developing because you will only compile a.css if you change any LESS files that affect it.
I had an idea for "cheap" version control of the css of one of my sites, but am thinking it may not be a good idea. Thought I'd throw it out here in case someone has a similar idea that works better (besides real svn, etc.)
My thought was to create a main css file like "sitename.css" then use #import inside this file to connect to the most recent file with updates. I'd name these imported files by date, eg: 20101222_css.css so I'd know when the last update was applied. When I have a change, I could make my edits, drop the update in the respective location, change the #import to the new file, and viola... updated on the site.
After reading about issues with #import, such as it loading AFTER the page finishes, I'm not too keen on this now.
Any ideas of a way to implement something similar without a full blown system? I do a lot of small project work for various people and thought this method may be a simple way to keep track of things.
Thanks for any ideas/suggestions.
Your idea would add additional page loads to your site for no good reason, which will be a performance hit. It would also expose your versioning to the outside world. And as you say it will suffer from slow loading speeds due to the way #import works.
But the real down-side of this technique is that it only works for CSS files. You haven't solved the problem for any other files on your site.
You seem to think it would be simpler to use than a real SVN setup, but if you end up coming up with different techniques like this for every type of file on your site, you could easily end up giving yourself more headaches than you solve.
SVN is actually quite straightforward to use. With a good GUI (try TortoiseSVN), it's so easy you almost forget its there. Seriously, use SVN. There's no need to come up with 'clever' alternatives.
Its not a good idea, especially if you push this into production. If you want "cheap" version control, download VisualSVN. Its free.
The guys at Yahoo use a technique that reminds me of what you describe:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://l.yimg.com/a/combo?arc/yui/reset_2.6.7.css&arc/yui/fonts_2.6.4.css&[....]/subfooter_0.0.12.css" />
It makes sense for them because it's a caching tecnique. They set HTTP headers so stuff never expires: if you load the site one year later and you haven't removed your browser's cache, you shouldn't need to fetch again any of the files that haven't changed.
However, it's by no means a sensible version control system. You already have a good bunch of real version control systems out there!
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Is there any advantage to having a single monster .css file that contains style elements that will be used on almost every page?
I'm thinking that for ease of management, I'd like to pull out different types of CSS into a few files, and include every file in my main <link /> is that bad?
I'm thinking this is better
positions.css
buttons.css
tables.css
copy.css
vs.
site.css
Have you seen any gotchas with doing it one way vs. the other?
This is a hard one to answer. Both options have their pros and cons in my opinion.
I personally don't love reading through a single HUGE CSS file, and maintaining it is very difficult. On the other hand, splitting it out causes extra http requests which could potentially slow things down.
My opinion would be one of two things.
1) If you know that your CSS will NEVER change once you've built it, I'd build multiple CSS files in the development stage (for readability), and then manually combine them before going live (to reduce http requests)
2) If you know that you're going to change your CSS once in a while, and need to keep it readable, I would build separate files and use code (providing you're using some sort of programming language) to combine them at runtime build time (runtime minification/combination is a resource pig).
With either option I would highly recommend caching on the client side in order to further reduce http requests.
EDIT:
I found this blog that shows how to combine CSS at runtime using nothing but code. Worth taking a look at (though I haven't tested it myself yet).
EDIT 2:
I've settled on using separate files in my design time, and a build process to minify and combine. This way I can have separate (manageable) css while I develop and a proper monolithic minified file at runtime. And I still have my static files and less system overhead because I'm not doing compression/minification at runtime.
note: for you shoppers out there, I highly suggest using bundler as part of your build process. Whether you're building from within your IDE, or from a build script, bundler can be executed on Windows via the included exe or can be run on any machine that is already running node.js.
A CSS compiler like Sass or LESS is a great way to go. That way you'll be able to deliver a single, minimised CSS file for the site (which will be far smaller and faster than a normal single CSS source file), while maintaining the nicest development environment, with everything neatly split into components.
Sass and LESS have the added advantage of variables, nesting and other ways to make CSS easier to write and maintain. Highly, highly recommended. I personally use Sass (SCSS syntax) now, but used LESS previously. Both are great, with similar benefits. Once you've written CSS with a compiler, it's unlikely you'd want to do without one.
http://lesscss.org
http://sass-lang.com
If you don't want to mess around with Ruby, this LESS compiler for Mac is great:
http://incident57.com/less/
Or you could use CodeKit (by the same guys):
http://incident57.com/codekit/
WinLess is a Windows GUI for comipiling LESS
http://winless.org/
I prefer multiple CSS files during development. Management and debugging is much easier that way. However, I suggest that come deployment time you instead use a CSS minify tool like YUI Compressor which will merge your CSS files into one monolithic file.
Historically, one of the main advantages x in having a single CSS file is the speed benefit when using HTTP1.1.
However, as of March 2018 over 80% of browsers now support HTTP2 which allows the browser to download multiple resources simultaneously as well as being able to push resources pre-emptively. Having a single CSS file for all pages means a larger than necessary file size. With proper design, I don't see any advantage in doing this other than its easier to code.
The ideal design for HTTP2 for best performance would be:
Have a core CSS file which contains common styles used across all pages.
Have page specific CSS in a separate file
Use HTTP2 push CSS to minimise wait time (a cookie can be used to prevent repeated pushes)
Optionally separate above the fold CSS and push this first and load the remaining CSS later (useful for low-bandwidth mobile devices)
You could also load remaining CSS for the site or specific pages after the page has loaded if you want to speed up future page loads.
You want both worlds.
You want multiple CSS files because your sanity is a terrible thing to waste.
At the same time, it's better to have a single, large file.
The solution is to have some mechanism that combines the multiple files in to a single file.
One example is something like
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="allcss.php?files=positions.css,buttons.css,copy.css" />
Then, the allcss.php script handles concatenating the files and delivering them.
Ideally, the script would check the mod dates on all the files, creates a new composite if any of them changes, then returns that composite, and then checks against the If-Modified HTTP headers so as to not send redundant CSS.
This gives you the best of both worlds. Works great for JS as well.
Having only one CSS file is better for the loading-time of your pages, as it means less HTTP requests.
Having several little CSS files means development is easier (at least, I think so : having one CSS file per module of your application makes things easier).
So, there are good reasons in both cases...
A solution that would allow you to get the best of both ideas would be :
To develop using several small CSS files
i.e. easier to develop
To have a build process for your application, that "combines" those files into one
That build process could also minify that big file, btw
It obviously means that your application must have some configuration stuff that allows it to swith from "multi-files mode" to "mono-file mode".
And to use, in production, only the big file
i.e. faster loading pages
There are also some software that do that combining of CSS files at run-time, and not at build-time ; but doing it at run-time means eating a bit more CPU (and obvisouly requires some caching mecanism, to not re-generate the big file too often)
Monolithic stylesheets do offer a lot of benefits (which are described in the other answers), however depending on the overall size of the stylesheet document you could run into problems in IE. IE has a limitation with how many selectors it will read from a single file. The limit is 4096 selectors. If you're monolithic stylesheet will have more than this you will want to split it. This limitation only rears it's ugly head in IE.
This is for all versions of IE.
See Ross Bruniges Blog and MSDN AddRule page.
There is a tipping point at which it's beneficial to have more than one css file.
A site with 1M+ pages, which the average user is likely to only ever see say 5 of, might have a stylesheet of immense proportions, so trying to save the overhead of a single additional request per page load by having a massive initial download is false economy.
Stretch the argument to the extreme limit - it's like suggesting that there should be one large stylesheet maintained for the entire web. Clearly nonsensical.
The tipping point will be different for each site though so there's no hard and fast rule. It will depend upon the quantity of unique css per page, the number of pages, and the number of pages the average user is likely to routinely encounter while using the site.
I typically have a handful of CSS files:
a "global" css file for resets and global styles
"module" specific css files for pages that are logically grouped (maybe every page in a checkout wizard or something)
"page" specific css files for overrides on the page (or, put this in a block on the individual page)
I am not really too concerned with multiple page requests for CSS files. Most people have decent bandwidth and I'm sure there are other optimizations that would have a far greater impact than combining all styles into one monolitic CSS file. The trade-off is between speed and maintainability, and I always lean towards maintainability. The YUI comperssor sounds pretty cool though, I might have to check that out.
I prefer multiple CSS files. That way it is easier to swap "skins" in and out as you desire. The problem with one monolithic file is that it can get out of control and hard to manage. What if you want blue backgrounds but don't want the buttons to change? Just alter your backgrounds file. Etc.
Maybe take a look at compass, which is an open source CSS authoring framework.
It's based on Sass so it supports cool things like variables, nesting, mixins and imports. Especially imports are useful if you want to keep seperate smaller CSS files but have them combined into 1 automatically (avoiding multiple slow HTTP calls).
Compass adds to this a big set of pre-defined mixins that are easy for handling cross-browser stuff.
It's written in Ruby but it can easily be used with any system....
here is the best way:
create a general css file with all shared code
insert all specific page css code into the same page, on the tag or using the attribute style="" for each page
on this way you have only one css with all shared code and an html page.
by the way (and i know that this is not the right topic) you can also encode your images in base64 (but you can also do it with your js and css files). in this way you reduce even more http requests to 1.
SASS and LESS make this all really a moot point. The developer can set up effective component files and on compile combine them all. In SASS you can toggle off the Compressed Mode while in development for easier reading, and toggle it back on for production.
http://sass-lang.com
http://lesscss.org
In the end a single minified CSS file is what you want regardless of the technique you use. Less CSS, Less HTTP requests, Less Demand on the server.
The advantage to a single CSS file is transfer efficiency. Each HTTP request means a HTTP header response for each file requested, and that takes bandwidth.
I serve my CSS as a PHP file with the "text/css" mime type in the HTTP header. This way I can have multiple CSS files on the server side and use PHP includes to push them into a single file when requested by the user. Every modern browser receives the .php file with the CSS code and processes it as a .css file.
You can just use one css file for performance and then comment out sections like this:
/******** Header ************/
//some css here
/******* End Header *********/
/******** Footer ************/
//some css here
/******* End Footer *********/
etc
I'm using Jammit to deal with my css files and use many different files for readability.
Jammit doest all the dirty work of combining and compressing the files before deployment in production.
This way, I've got many files in development but only one file in production.
A bundled stylesheet may save page load performance but the more styles there are the slower the browser renders animations on the page you are on. This is caused by the huge amount of unused styles that may not be on the page you are on but the browser still has to calculate.
See: https://benfrain.com/css-performance-revisited-selectors-bloat-expensive-styles/
Bundled stylesheets advantages:
- page load performance
Bundled stylesheets disadvantages:
- slower behaviour, which can cause choppyness during scrolling, interactivity, animation,
Conclusion:
To solve both problems, for production the ideal solution is to bundle all the css into one file to save on http requests, but use javascript to extract from that file, the css for the page you are on and update the head with it.
To know which shared components are needed per page, and to reduce complexity, it would be nice to have declared all the components this particular page uses - for example:
<style href="global.css" rel="stylesheet"/>
<body data-shared-css-components="x,y,z">
I've created a systematic approach to CSS development. This way I can utilize a standard that never changes. First I started with the 960 grid system. Then I created single lines of css for basic layouts, margins, padding, fonts and sizes. I then string them together as needed. This allows me to keep a consistent layout across all of my projects and utilize the same css files over and over. Because they are not specific. Here's an example: ----div class="c12 bg0 m10 p5 white fl"/div--- This means that the container is 12 columns across, utilizes bg0 has margins of 10px padding of 5 the text is white and it floats left. I could easily change this by removing or adding a new - What I call a "light" style- Instead of creating a single class with all these attributes; I simply combine the single styles as I code the page. This allows me to create any combination of styles and does not limit my creativity or cause me to create a massive number of styles that are similar. Your style sheets become a lot more manageable, minimized and allow you to re-use it over and over. This method I have found to be fantastic for rapid design. I also no longer design first in PSD but in the browser which also saves time. In addition because I have also created a naming system for my backgrounds and page design attributes I simply change out my image file when creating a new project.(bg0 = body background according to my naming system) That means that if I previously had a white background with one project simply changing it to black simply means that on the next project bg0 will be a black background or another image..... I have not found anything wrong with this method yet and it seems to work very well.
I've recently begun working on a very large, high traffic website. We would very much like to reduce the size and number of our style sheets, minification is one route we will pursue but is anyone aware of any tools for checking ID and class use? Literally scanning the website to see what's active and what isn't?
Alternatively any software for redacting the css to reduce repition and size?
Thanks in advance
Literally scanning the website to see
what's active and what isn't?
Dust-Me Selectors is a Firefox plugin that you can use to show what css rules aren't being used.
http://www.sitepoint.com/dustmeselectors/
I can certainly recommend Page Speed (http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/) by Google to check the performance (and possible improvements) of your webpages.
Page Speed also checks CSS and usage of classes on your webpages.
It is used in combination with Firebug.
Gzip compression in the webserver.
Expiry dates that lie far in the future to avoid redownloading the CSS files.
Alternatively any software for
redacting the css to reduce repition
and size?
Yet another level of indirection ... You (and your team) should write long CSS files with as many comments as needed and then write a tool that will publish merged files as needed (different templates need different files), stripped comments and minified as http://www.cleancss.com could do (CSSTidy). Readability comes first if you wan't to be able to modify a file in 1 month or keep track of modifications (or worse if sb else must do that!).
Other options are to reduce the number of templates used throughout the site. No need of two templates with 2px differences (grid layouts are a good way to stick to this) or inconsistent ways of displaying error messages. Define a common look and feel to your site and give instructions to webdesigners, if it isn't already done.