Stuff I Learned At SXSW, Part 1
March 11, 2012
One of the best sessions I’ve had so far was CSS For Grown-Ups by Andy Hume.
Some of the highlights:
- CSS is ‘Constraint Programming’.
- Obsession with eliminating ‘classitis’ is outdated and not good practice.
- The idea of doing a redesign without touching the markup is a myth.
- Apply OOP principles to CSS. For example, extend your semantic classes, such as .promo-box–light (double dash indicates dependence).
- Optimize for change! Website maintainability is supremely important.
- Using semantic class names is emerging as new best practice.
- Selector Queries – Andy’s JS solution for adjusting elements based on width using a data-squery attribute and adding classes.
- Use surgical layout helpers, eg .gutter-left, .gutter-right in div containers.
- New code practice: For sprite sheets, use <i class=”icon icon-comment”>
- Don’t style pages, style modules.
- Do styleguides in code, ala Twitter Bootstrap or Paul Robert Lloyd’s Styleguide.
- Style guides are a great opportunity to bring design and dev together.
For a more in-depth overview of the talk, check out this blog post along with the slides.