i want to create some css styles for my Django templates. Each view will have a css associated, but there will be zones that are not associated to any views in my template.
How can i load the css files? is there enough having them declared in the Media of my view, and loading them in the header of the html?
Also, is it a correct approach to have styles associated to the divs that are not associated to a certain view?
Thanks!
If you use a word view for a typical django view (a method) it is not good idea to create separate css file for each view (unless you have very specific application).
In general you need to create you css files in such way that:
general styles that can be applied in many templates are not repeated in multiple css files
it is easy for you to manage styles in couple of css files
There is no strict guideline to create css file per view or css file per template in Django as far as I know.
Basically pointing to some css file in head, which contains styles appropriate to a template is enough here. Of course you need to make sure that you provide correct path to this file.
You can make one general css with styles that are used by most of your templates and a series of specific css files that are valid only in some specialized templates.
I also advice to take a look at django-compress if you want to go with your site to broader audience - this app makes your static files (like css) smaller and also it helps to concatenate group of css and js files. This has some positive impact on performance without decreasing readability of your code.
Related
Is there a way to include a css file with a view model and not a view?
I've tried looking at the nativescript documentation and have not been able to find the answer
This view model is used/presented in a number of different views so adding the css classes to each view folders css file works but makes it harder to maintain as I now have duplicate css classes floating about in different folders.
Alternatively i could put it in the global css file however this can quickly become too large of a file if i need to do this for multiple view models/ styles.
Use case:
A list of items that get validated in an async manner which will change css class based on status (simple use case example background-color changes to: white/red/yellow/green).
please note that I am coding a non-angular app.
I am looking to the wisdom of the crowd for views on best practice for implementing CSS.
Our site was initially built using SASS compilers for CSS. Over time as more functionality has been added, each with specific styles, the CSS files and partials have become large. Loading all CSS for the entire site seems a waste of resources and time, particularly when a large percent is not utilised on any given page. However I am still told that this is more efficient than either inline styles or CSS style blocks within the page.
I am currently considering stripping down everything but core CSS to the SASS CSS file and then creating a series of specific CSS files that are loaded as required.
How have others approached this problem. Is there a consensus on the "best practice" when CSS files become large?
Thanks
D
You can write SASS only for specific parts of your site and load styles for specific pages only. For example you don't have to load styles for product list when you are on product page.
In the meantime you can have global stylesheet for something like menu, footer.
Loading styles inline or in block prevents styles from caching and makes your user download it each time they open website.
This is the perfect opportunity to clean up your styles and start fresh. I would reccomend you create layout.scss for styles used in all pages, and component_X.scss for specific component styles.
What I am doing right now is having one CSS file in the \Web\Css\Style.css path with all classes and ids of every element in my website. I have 6 bundles plus the base twig template's styles stored inside this CSS file. I begun to create headers for different sections e.g. "main styles" or "footer" but sooner or later it became a mess.
Right now I am just adding styles on the bottom of the file. How could I clean out and re-organize my CSS code? How can I use a separate CSS file for each bundle? Which is the most "professional" approach ?
(*) same happens for JavaScript files but there is a too small amount of code right now for it to be a problem.
I find it better to maintain CSS and JavaScript files outside of any bundles. It's also easier to use tools such as Sass or Compass.
Ryan Weaver gave a talk on this topic on the SymfonyCon in Warsaw. You can watch it on YouTube:
Video
Slides
An example project
I know that there are questions regarding this same topic, but for HTML. What are some good conventions in regards to using external stylesheets in a Flex app.? How would you break up the stylesheets (names of stylesheets and what they include)?
Flex compiles the external CSS file when you publish your project.
There is a way to load CSS at runtime using Flex; it can be done by compiling CSS files into SWF files and load them at runtime using StyleManager.loadStyleDeclarations.
See the LiveDocs on Stylesheets at Run Time for more info.
Some conventions we use in organizing stylesheets:
Have one main.css stylesheet that holds all of the data for skinning the base application.
Have one fonts.css stylesheet to store all of the fonts in the main app, because these can get quite messy.
The main.css stylesheet is included in the main swf via the <mx:Style source="main.css"/> tag. We load our app with as little as possible, and once everything is loaded, if we need to immediately show some text (sometimes we just have a video playing if it's an advertising site), we fade/tween in the main elements and load the fonts.css via StyleManager.loadStyleDeclarations at runtime.
If we have an admin panel, we have an admin.css stylesheet which we load at runtime because the main app doesn't need it.
We don't need to divide up the CSS anymore than that because we usually create a whole set of skins in a Theme, so the stylesheet is just applying those skins to components and is pretty lean (using Flex 4). I tend not do divide stylesheets into anything smaller (like "pages.css", "comments.css", "popups.css", or even "controls.css", etc.) because it would be overkill and too much to manage for little in return. That's common with HTML, but that's because HTML requires CSS for nice presentation; Flex could do without CSS entirely.
When developing, one of us usually develops most of the skin right away (having a default wireframe setup, like those found on ScaleNine as they do the photoshop/flash/after-effects. There's no way to not have to recompile the css swf if you make changes. But if it is loaded at runtime, you only have to recompile the css file and not the main swf, which is useful but not really useful during hardcore skin development.
I tried keeping the main stylesheet separate during development (in a custom Theme), and it made development a LOT harder, because I had to recompile the css separately every time I made a change and sometimes I had to recompile the main app too, and there were strange and hard-to-track-down bugs, etc. Then I was compiling two different apps. So I recommend keeping the main css file part of the main app.
If you wanted runtime css without having to recompile anything, try Ruben's CSS Loader and check out the source. But that would come at a runtime performance cost.
Flex is not something I've dealt with, but I did some research. It looks like the code to call a remote stylesheet is this:
<mx:Style source="com/example/assets/stylesheet.css" />
Flex Quick Start: Building a simple user interface: Styling your components says this:
Note: You should try to limit the
number of style sheets used in an
application, and set the style sheet
only at the top-level document in the
application (the document that
contains the tag). If
you set a style sheet in a child
document, unexpected results can
occur.
The implication of this seems to be that multiple stylesheets are not really possible. It sounds like what you want to do is organize your stylesheets, check out Organizing Your Stylesheets and Architecting CSS for some ideas for approaches. It looks like you have classes and basic tags, but the W3C stylesheet specifications are different from the Flex stylesheet specification.
As a non-Flex developer, Namespaces looks interesting as a way to organize namespaces: How to use the new CSS syntax in Flex 4.
I'd been reading up on themes in my ASP.NET book and thought that it could be a very handy solution, then I met some problems.
The theme picks up every single CSS file in the folder
If you want to use reset styles (where ordering is important) the order of imported stylesheets is not guaranteed
Your master page would not explicitly indicate what style is being used, only the rendered page can tell you that unless you dig into your web.config
Styling web controls using the theme file is... well... stupid? You can simply do this in your stylesheet. Granular control should be at the HTML level, should it not?
How do you specify print stylesheets without having all styles in a single stylesheet?
I'm wondering as to whether they're actually worth using at all. Is there any benefit? Are there any major sites using them?
EDIT
Just to clarify slolife's last point. If I had two stylesheets, one called print.css and one called main.css and I used ASP.NET themes, how would it know that print.css was a print stylesheet? In regular HTML you use the media type in the tag itself (i.e. <link rel= ...>) but the themes wouldn't know this, so it would just get included as a regular stylesheet.
I like using themes, but as Raj pointed out in his answer, URL rewriting can cause problems. My search for some solutions to that is what led me to your question. But I'll add my opinions in anyway.
I'll address some of your bullets from above as to why I think themes are good:
- The theme picks up every single CSS file in the folder
I guess you are looking to apply only certain stylesheet files to certain pages. Yes, themes takes the shotgun approach here, so that's a problem. But you don't have to put all stylesheets in the the theme folder. Put your specialized ones outside of it and they won't be included automatically. But I think it is nice feature to have the common/site wide ones included automagically.
- If you want to use reset styles (where ordering is important) the order of imported stylesheets is not guaranteed
I think you can guarantee the order by the way you name the files, so they are numerically and alphabetically ordered. Maybe not an elegant solution, but not horrible.
Personally, I have a build step that combines and compresses all of the *.css files in my theme folder into one single style.css file, and since I control that build step and the order that the files are combined, that doesn't affect me.
- Your master page would not explicitly indicate what style is being used, only the rendered page can tell you that unless you dig into your web.config
You can change the theme via code and in the <%#Page directive
- Styling web controls using the theme file is... well... stupid? You can simply do this in your stylesheet. Granular control should be at the HTML level, should it not?
I agree that applying style attributes to controls via the theme doesn't seem to be a best practice. But I love the fact that I can define image skins in the theme's skin files and don't have to cut and paste Width,Height,AlternativeText,Align attributes for common images that I use lots of places throughout the site. And if I ever change one of those images, I can fix the attributes in one place, rather than all over. I also can created skinned controls with a certain list of css classes applied, which seems handy to me.
- How do you specify print stylesheets without having all styles in a single stylesheet?
I have a Print.css file that starts with #media print and that defines print styles for my site. Why do you need to put them in one stylesheet?
IMHO, asp.net themes are absolutely USELESS
try implementing url rewriting with an app which uses themes and see them break straight away
basically, you can achieve the same thing writing few lines of code in asp.net and multiple css folders. i am yet to come across any developer / company who has been using themes
when asp.net 2.0 was launched, there was a big hype around themes but my personal opinion is its simply not worth it :-)
Use themes to change control attributes ONLY.
They were bad designed for working with css.