Displacing Worst Practices in CSS

DISPLACING WORST PRACTICES(and making better CSS for all)

Pam Selle@pamasaur

thewebivore.com

STORYTIME

No.

Yes.

THE PLAN

•What are the ‘worst practices’?

• Identifying

• Solving

• Practices for prevention

IDENTIFYING WORST PRACTICES

REDUNDANCY

• Symptom: Declaring styles that are inherent, styles that negate other ones in the chain.

• Solution: Take your freebies and remove things that don’t matter.

div { display: block; }.my-class { display: block; float: left; }img { display: inline-block; }span { display: inline; }.nav { position: absolute; float: left; }

REDUNDANCY

Prescription:

Mozilla Developer Network

REPETITION AND DISORGANIZATION

• Symptom: See many of the same declarations over and over.

• Symptom: See styles being overridden in web inspector.

• Symptom: Having to reset styles because of previous declarations.

REPETITION AND DISORGANIZATION

.blue-title { color: blue; font-size: 16px; font-family: Arial }.blue-content { color: blue; font-size: 14px; font-family: Arial }

.blue-title, .blue-content {color: blue; font-family: Arial; }.blue-title { font-size: 16px; }.blue-content { font-size: 14px; }

%blue-thing {color: blue; font-family: Arial; }.blue-title { @extend %blue-thing; font-size: 16px; }.blue-content { @extend %blue-thing; font-size: 14px; }

h2 { border-bottom: 1px solid #ddd; padding: 10px 0; float: left;}h2.other-title { border-bottom:none; padding:0 0 5px; float:none;}

.secondary-title { border-bottom: 1px solid #ddd; padding: 10px 0; float: left;}.other-title { padding:0 0 5px;}

REPETITION AND DISORGANIZATION

Prescription:

Refactoring, with a side of architecture.

DETOUR INTO PREPROCESSORS

• Favorite benefits of preprocessors:

• Partials (architecture)

• Extendables (in Sass 3.2) %

• Sprite benefits (Compass)

OVERSPECIFICITY

•Wasting your time and the browser’s time

.header .logo .title.name { }#nav ul li a { }.content a.title { }

.logo > .title { }

.nav li > a { }

.content .title { }

OVERSPECIFICITY

Prescription:

Understanding how browsers interpret CSS.

HOW BROWSERS EVALUATE CSS

Resources:https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/best-practices/renderinghttps://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/Writing_Efficient_CSS

The engine evaluates each rule from right to left, starting from the rightmost selector (called the "key") and moving through each selector until it finds a match or discards the rule. (The "selector" is the document element to which the rule should apply.)

HOW BROWSERS EVALUATE CSS

Specificity:

1. Ids

2. Classes

3. Tags

4. UniversalsFrom SpeciFISHity by Weyl

INVALID DECLARATIONS• Symptom: Crossed out in web inspector, because it’s wrong,

not overridden.

• Symptom: A style is written, but not rendering. (because it’s wrong)

• Solution: ⌫. And read the MDN.

.classy { background-position: inital initial; font: Arial; font: 14px/16px Arial sans-serif; padding: -10px;}

NO FALLBACKS• Know what you support, and debug before you see it in the

browser.

•Most common with colors, so add a simple color (background-, border-) declaration fallback.

• Includes setting position properly -- a common problem in some browsers

NO FALLBACKS

Common Suspects:rgba()linear-gradientradial-gradientbox-shadowposition: absolute (forgetting a vertical or horizontal position)

INLINE STYLES

The purpose of styles is to to separate structure from presentation.

Oh, and it will also give you specificity problems.

DISPLACING WORST PRACTICES

TRAIN EARLY AND OFTEN

TRAIN EARLY

• “Bootcamp”

• Presentations on full stack/tools

• Identify available resources

•Documentation, videos, useful tutorials

•Mentoring

ONBOARDING

•Documentation, Documentation, Documentation

•Onboarding session

•Make past presentations available

KEEP IT UP

• Lightning talks

• Hack Days

• See “Zombies in My Workplace” for more ideas

• http://www.slideshare.net/sbastn/zombies-in-my-workplace

STYLEGUIDES

TEXTUAL STYLEGUIDES

•Document!

• Style

• Idioms

• Structure

TEXTUAL STYLEGUIDES

• Public Styleguides

• Google: http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/htmlcssguide.xml

• GitHub: https://github.com/styleguide/css

• ThinkUp: https://github.com/ginatrapani/ThinkUp/wiki/Code-Style-Guide:-CSS

• Manifestos

• Idiomatic CSS: https://github.com/necolas/idiomatic-css

• SMACSS: http://smacss.com/

VISUAL STYLEGUIDES

• Visual Dictionary

• Explain visuals and usage

• Interface with visual designers

KSS

•Generated CSS documentationhttp://warpspire.com/kss/

•Learn to generate your own styleguide:http://warpspire.com/kss/styleguides/

INTERACTIVE STYLEGUIDES

• Put your elements in full context

•Maintain a site-wide brand

• Reduce, Reuse, & Recycle

CODE REVIEW

INTRODUCING CODE REVIEW

• Use your styleguide/documentation as guideline

• Continues mentoring process

• Saves QA time by reviewing before staging

MODULAR ORGANIZATION

INTRODUCING ARCHITECTURE

• Consider pre-processors

• Consider your build process

• Consider adopting a methodology (OOCSS, etc.)

•Measure everything

• Interface with visual design strategy

FINAL INVENTORY

•Identify and repair misguided styles

•Tools to improve and embark on the joyous path of maintainability

Thanks.

Pam Sellethewebivore.com

@pamasaur