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.
Related
So I've recently started making more use of EJS templates in my website and so I've done things like broken out the top nav bar and other things into their own template. Is there a standard practice for how to organize CSS (or more specifically SCSS) with that? Should I just make a matching SCSS for each template with just the styles for that template and add the <link/> in each page that uses the template? Or just I just add <style/> tags to the template itself with the CSS in there. Is there a standard pattern for this?
Good question. I think the answer is "no", there is no universally best or accepted standard.
The advice my "work-mentor" always gives me is good advice: he says "do what will be the easiest to maintain". This would depend on your project. I can think of a couple general strategies:
One stylesheet per template
That is, in a way, the simplest suggestion. Probably the easiest to develop, and each page will bring the minimum needed styles.
However, this makes reusing styles pretty impossible. You won't be able to plunk in a <button class="myclass"> into any template without reincluding the styles for .myclass in every sheet you need them in. Also, if you ever want to automate your style sheets (minifying or concatenating them for production, etc) as is common practice, it won't be very possible from here.
One more downside, you might get some unexpected ordering effects. Like if your "widget.css" ends up being added to the DOM after your "article.css" it may override styles in a different way than it would have if it had appeared earlier in the DOM.
All styles on every page
Again, this is nice and simple. Every page has all stylesheets (or maybe just one giant sheet) included. You can link to it once in your outer layout template. It will be easy to automate minification, etc, and there will never be any surprises related to the order stylesheets are added in.
The obvious downside is lots of unused styles brought to each page. But css is pretty "cheap" in terms of size, so this may not be such a bad downside.
Somewhere in between
Include some styles on every page, and make some either page-specific or template-specific. Realistically, this is probably what most apps end up doing.
You can universally include utility styles meant to be reused (ex button.bigred, form.orderform, etc), as well as dependencies like bootstrap or whatever. I'd also advise including any styles you will need on more than half of your pages (ex styles for your navbar).
Other styles intended for one specific page can be added to that page directly via links.
last note
I try to avoid <style> tags in the html for a couple of reasons:
Lots of js libraries dynamically add or remove <style> tags to your DOM, so leaving that space clear for them avoids possible mistakes or overlaps.
They are a good way to add dynamic or user-managed styles to pages from within your templates. Keep styles that don't change in the stylesheets, to avoid possible mistakes or overlaps with yourself :)
I've been working with the ModX Revolution manager, and was wondering if I can turn my CSS into ModX Resources rather than files. I'd also like to utilize Templates and their variables. Is that possible? What are the drawbacks of doing so? Are there any advantages (aside from the ones I think below)?
The reason I would prefer this is that I use several CSS pages with the #import statement to object orient my CSS a little bit better. If I could do this directly in ModX, it would save me uploads and syncing.
In previous versions of ModX (Evo and Revo), you used to have to go through tricks. Now with 2.2.2pl, it is possible with very few tricks. The information to do this is sparse and inaccurate any more. Here's how you do it:
Create Your Template
Create a new Template. I named mine CSS Stylesheet. (Simple as that)
For the content, simply put [[*content]].
Create Your CSS Page
Create a new resource. Name it whatever you would like.
Add your alias. Make sure you do not add the .css at the end. ModX should do this for you.
Now, make sure your new page is published. You may also want to hide from menus.
Add your CSS code. No funny tricks... Just copy and paste it like you normally would.
Test the Stylesheet
Simply navigate directly to your new page as if it were an html document. Don't forget the .css instead of .html. If you see the CSS code, then you've succeeded.
Add Your CSS to the Templates
This one is the tricky part. You won't be able to use the <link rel=></link>.
Simply go to your <head> element. Add the following code:
<style type="text/css">
#import url("");
</style>
Test the
Inside the url("");, just place the url to your new resource.
Advantages
Aside from the saving the uploading and downloading, you can now edit your CSS using any of the ModX tools. Additionally there are a few other perks:
If you're like me, file names are useful, but often not descriptive enough. You can name them whatever you like! Its the alias that is important anyway.
Handy tool-tips based on the Description of the resource.
You may also utilize the Summary of the resource for other things. I place the important file comments in here, so that my CSS is smaller.
Template Variables! In previous versions of ModX, you couldn't have a Template for your CSS.
Chunks and Snippets, if you so desire. You have to write them as plain text, rather than HTML, but it's still useful if you are creative.
Your CSS is now shared between all of your Contexts if you like. This is due to the nature of the #import statement.
You can edit your CSS from any computer. You may even set up your front-end for the editing.
Drawbacks
There's always trade-offs, and with this technique it is no different. A lot depends on how you have things set up for your site.
Your saving and editing is based on your server performance.
Your URL requests will be based even more on your ModX performance. For some, adding these extra resources could slow things down. Often, its not enough to worry about, but its worth mentioning.
It's now managed by the database, so its subject to database security. This can be good or bad. Even it is good, it probably will require extra set up from you.
Your Templates, Snippets and Plugins can break your CSS, if programmed incorrectly. This is something you really want to be careful with.
Each CSS request is treated as a separate request by ModX. The Template Variables and plugins do not apply to the web page you are viewing. They apply to the CSS content.
Conclusion
The whole process takes about 15 minutes. And ultimately, it's even faster to revert back if it doesn't work for you (just don't delete the raw files until you are sure). The added functionality is worth it to me.
I have a DotNetNuke skin that has a single CSS file over 3,500 lines long. It contains styles for YUI, Telerik, Cluetip as well as the actual customisation of the site. The old developers just kept adding styles and never cleaned up the old unused ones.
I want to cleanup the file and get it to a more managable size. I first thought about scanning through the code base but this is 5,500 files with a mixture of CSS applied in the .aspx, .ascx and .cs files as well as jQuery aplying styles sometimes from generated code and sometimes from js files. Some styles are applied with class selectors and others with id selectors.
Is there a way I can easily check just which styles the website actually needs across all of its pages? Is there some crawler that could do this?
For firefox there is an add-in called dust-me-selectors. If you provide a sitemap, it will find all unused css styles.
If you run dust-me-selectors, remember to run it in every page of your website so you don't delete any styles that are actually used.
I'm making a website that will have to render correctly on FF/IE6/IE7/Opera/Safari. IE6 came as a late requirement (when I had done all the other browsers) and it just has to be useable, not necessarily the same as on the other browsers. Now I'm tweaking it so that it's useable on IE6 as well.
To this end I've created another stylesheet in my theme called IE6_override.css. As you might have guessed, I want it to be applied only when the browser is IE6. Conditional comments would perfect for this.
The only problem is - ASP.NET renders a <link> tag for every CSS file that is in the theme's folder, thus including this file unconditionally on all browsers.
I would like to stick to themes because it's completely feasible that we might create more skins for our application later (if the customers desire that).
Is there any way how I can make ASP.NET exclude this specific .CSS file from its auto-including?
Added: Thank you for your answers! In the end I found a workaround. Due to some other styling problems I've asked about earlier, I'm forced to have a IE6-workaround Javascript as well. Thus I prefixed all my IE6-specific rules with a .ie6_dummy class selector and then removed it in JS upon page loading. :)
Yes you can... You can just remove the specific page header control in code behind. The css files are added automatically through theming, but u can remove them again after. Like for example u can put in the page load of your master file:
Page.Header.Controls.Remove(YourCssFile);
Or if you wanna have all the css files removed at the same time:
var themePath = string.Format("~/App_Themes/{0}", Page.Theme);
var removeCandidate = Page.Header.Controls.OfType<HtmlLink>().Where(link => link.Href.StartsWith(themePath)).ToList();
removeCandidate.ForEach(Page.Header.Controls.Remove);
I don't think you can. We stopped using the App_Themes folder for exactly that reason. This also saved us having to prefix every css file with a number so they load in the right order.
Indeed it's not possible to exclude a specific CSS file. However, there seem to be several workarounds located here. I'd suggest reading through those and choosing an appropriate solution (if any).
There are a couple of posts out on the web which seem to address your problem - looking for "Conditional comments in asp.net themes" I came across these which look like they may help:
How to take control of style sheets in ASP.NET Themes with the StylePlaceholder and Style control
Conditional stylesheets in Themes
The first one will also address the media issue with theme stylesheets as well.
I am currently working on a project where a programmer who fancied themselves a graphic designer attempted their hand at ASP.Net themes. The CSS is pretty bad, but that is another question altogether.
What I really need help with is the best way to organize ASP.Net Themes and the CSS that lies within them. Imagine that there is a directory structure that looks something like this:
Themes
Theme A
StyleA.css
Common.css
Theme B
StyleB.css
Common.css
Theme C
StyleC.css
Common.css
Each theme has a common stylesheet in it. Unfortunately the author of those style sheets managed to change only a few things here and there in each copy of Common.css. Eventually I will evaluate whether or not those changes are even necessary, but some major cleanup needs to happen first. For now just assume that the changes, ever so small, are necessary for things to look right with each theme.
I would like to know what the best practices are for using themes while also needing some common styles across your application. I want to minimize the number of AppTurns in the page load, but I really want to consolidate common styles into one place in a way that maintains the ease of themes.
You should just include the standard/common css in the website and include it in the head of the masterpage instead of placing it in themes.
I have written a small article about that:
http://www.sambeauvois.be/blog/2010/01/dont-repeat-your-common-css-between-your-different-themes/
I'll complete it with more information later
Yes, just reference the common CSS file directly instead of putting it in the theme folders.
But what if you have a webpage in a sub folder that uses the masterpage? Won't the page to the css file be wrong then?