CSS Best Practices

Random Resources

Currently just a list of links on the web:

• Web Page Development: Best Practices on Developer.Apple.com
• Best practices with CSS in Dreamweaver MX
• CSS Best Practices - Dave Shea, the creator of CSS Zen Garden
• "CSS Best Practices" Syllabus by Jim Royal
  • The Presentation
• Keep your CSS organized by webdesign.about.com
  • Writing a CSS Stylesheet That is Easy to Maintain
• Wired News Design Documentation

Ideas

Example Pages

ChrisN, ByronT and I were chatting one day about the concept of 'Example Pages'. These pages are essentially used on projects (large or small) that demonstrate the use and application of styles. Providing example of context and cascade and how styles and selectors are used for a specific project and specific sections/pages/modules. To deal with collisions and conflicting context you would need N number of 'Example Pages'.

Not only would these pages provide - in a sense - a style guide but also a reference for team members to correctly determine if and where styles were created and how to re-apply them. Effectively reducing the amount of redundant code and duplicated effort.

Formats, Styles and White space

There are two distinctive influences here; the first being the developer(s) and the second being the client. As we've seen, clients often have a significant influence on how the formatting/style of a CSS source file looks upon delivery of the finished product. This often means producing source code that has white space trimmed, condensed blocks, etc.

However, these client requirements don't need to be infused into our development and our coding style but rather accomplished by passing our source through a programmatic filter prior to delivery. This way our source can be consistent and perhaps more modular and reusable in the future.

White space

Speaking further on white space in general and file sizes. If it truly is of importance, the filters would also go into specifics of converting multiple concurrent space characters into a single tab. Specific rules defining how this works could be defined through the pre-built and customizable filters and rules for those filters.