Creating maintainable CSS

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... The Excruciating Kitchen Sink Analogy ... OOCSS, SMACSS, and BEM ... “Allow markup to change” ... “Keep your selectors short” ... “Don’t sweat the class names” ... “Be pragmatic” ... “Extend your modules” ... “Layout modules” ... Style Guides ... Homework/Beer Creating maintainable CSS

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Rich Archer ...@slocombe [email protected]

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Creating a new site is sexy

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Maintaining a site is painful

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• SMACSS smacss.com • OOCSS oocss.org • BEM bem.info A better way to structure our styles?

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Whatever; CSS is easy! ...no namespaces ...no macros ...no mixins ...no functions ...no variables

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CSS makes it easy for us to be stupid

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CSS makes it easy for us to be stupid #content.box { ... } #wrapper #content.box { ... } #i-mean-it-this-time #wrapper #content.box { ... }

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• LESS lesscss.org • SASS/SCSS sass-lang.com • Stylus learnboost.github.com/stylus But we have preprocessors!

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But we have preprocessors! #i-mean-it-this-time { #wrapper { #content.box { ... } } }

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• SMACSS smacss.com • OOCSS oocss.org • BEM bem.info Seeking to address di!erent problems

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“Separate Content from Presentation” The One Rule

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Sites are always adapting Allow for markup to change

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http://vimeo.com/29088090 37 Signals

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Keep your selectors short

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html #content #wrapper article.main-article:nth-child(2) div.panel { ... }

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p.panel, div.panel { ... } .panel { ... }

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Keep your selectors short ...easier debugging ...easier point of entry ...avoid speci!city issues ...CSS evaluates right-to-left ...performance?

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Headings Headings Headings Headings Headings Examples!

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h1 a h2 h2 h2 h4 h3 h4

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h1 { font-size: 36px; } h2 { font-size: 24px; } #sidebar li a, h3 { font-size: 18px; }

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.heading-headline { font-size: 36px; } .heading-subheadline { font-size: 24px; } .heading-byline { font-size: 18px; } Modules

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.heading-headline { font-size: 36px; } .heading-subheadline { font-size: 24px; } .heading-byline { font-size: 18px; } .theme-summer { color: gold; } .theme-autumn { color: burlywood; } .theme-winter { color: blue; } Combinations of modules

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(Google doesn’t care) Don’t sweat the class names

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.heading-headline { font-size: 36px; } .heading-subheadline { font-size: 24px; } .heading-byline { font-size: 18px; }

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.h-headline { font-size: 36px; } .h-subheadline { font-size: 24px; } .h-byline { font-size: 18px; }

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.bob--hugetext { font-size: 36px; } .bob--middletext{ font-size: 24px; } .bob--teenytext{ font-size: 18px; }

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ul li {} ... .search-result-item {}

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...

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...

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.fancy-link { height: 20px; background: red; } button.fancy-link { padding: 0; border: 0; } Be pragmatic

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Performance boost? ...reuse of code ...smaller CSS !les ...faster download ...less to parse ...combine modules for free varieties

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Title

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.messagebox { border: 1px solid green; } .messagebox h2 { color: red; }

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Title

Another title

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.messagebox { border: 1px solid green; } .messagebox h2 { color: red; }

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Title

Another title

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.messagebox { border: 1px solid green; } .messagebox-header { color: red; }

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Extend your modules

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.messagebox { border: 1px solid black; color: white; background: green; }

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.messagebox { border: 1px solid black; color: white; background: green; } .mildalert { border: 1px solid black; color: white; background: orange; } .badalert { border: 1px solid black; color: white; background: red; }

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.messagebox { border: 3px solid black; color: white; background: green; } .messagebox-mild { background: orange; } .messagebox-bad { background: red; }

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Easier organisation ...Easier to !nd relevant code ...Less “where should this rule go?” ...More predictable ...More maintainable ...Easier debugging ...Faster development

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Layout modules

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Layout Handles positioning only. Twitter Bootstrap sca!olding, OOCSS, 960gs

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.btn .btn .content .subcontent .footer .btn

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.btn .span3 .btn .span3 .content .span8 .subcontent .span4 .footer .btn .row .span6

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Layout Handles positioning only. Twitter Bootstrap sca!olding, OOCSS, 960gs

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Module Layout Handles positioning only. Twitter Bootstrap sca!olding, OOCSS, 960gs .button, .messageBox, .search-item

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Module Layout Handles positioning only. Twitter Bootstrap sca!olding, OOCSS, 960gs Base Browser resets, basic typography, element styles .button, .messageBox, .search-item

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Style guides

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Site-speci"c style guides ...a CSS component example page ...uses live CSS ...acts as crib sheets for newbies ...single page to check for modi!cations

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Useful links Rich Archer @slocombe [email protected] • SMACSS smacss.com • OOCSS oocss.org • BEM bem.info • Twitter Bootstrap getbootstrap.com • Jonathan Snook @snookca • Nicolle Sullivan @stubbornella