Nicole Sullivan
CSS Tools for Massive Websites
Associated Material
Comments (13)
@Ryan
How about letting the 12 year old style Facebook and see how he fares?
Posted: Mon 02 May 2011 10:45 p.m.
Sounds like something a programmer would say...
Posted: Tue 03 May 2011 12:36 a.m.
Not sure about that. CSS can become quite complicated as the site grows and it seems to also be a place to get lazy since the code can work whether you have MBs of code or have slimmed down the code.
I'm coming up on various tasks where I am told to try my best to use existing classes and either past developers did not think of the next developer or have not made their code accessible enough. So, then I end up adding to its inaccessibility (not a good way to end a day of coding). I try to follow these guidelines the best I can because they just make sense within some of my projects.
Posted: Tue 03 May 2011 5:22 a.m.
Nicole rocks !!!
Posted: Sat 14 May 2011 10:18 p.m.
@Quiet_angry_kid, you must be the videographer!
Keep the camera on the slides, not on Nicole!!!
Terrible video. She was saying "These figures dont' make sense..etc. etc."
What figures? We can't see the slides because the camera man is infatuated with Nicole.
Totally distracting.
Posted: Sat 21 May 2011 8:22 a.m.
@Ryan Sharp I would go even lower and say a 6yr old can learn basic CSS in a day.
Back to reality: There are so many compatibility issues for CSS e.g more than that of all web programming languages combined.
It's not something you can master in a day, or a couple of years even if only style css from scratch (without WYSIWYG).
For anyone reading this. This is the best way to perfect CSS:
1)learn as many cross browser compatibility difference's & workarounds as possible.
2) Learn how to simplify code (e.g using multiple classes on a tag).
3) Get the fonts right (Learn to reset the font size for all browsers)
4) Build for the future ( don't model your site on < IE8 , make safe sacrifices to IE clients for Webkit & Moz browsers)
5) Avoid frameworks & WYSIWYG (use them to learn but don't depend on them.
6) Visual rule: "consider CSS b4 Javascript or flash" (I see a lot of sites using JS for nav menus when they can use basic css/ css3. Also you can preload images via CSS).
I have no idea why i decided to type this... hopefully this will helps someone.
Posted: Sun 22 May 2011 9:15 p.m.
Great talk, Nicole. I work on a large, established codebase and everything you said rings true for me.
It's amazing how few developers really understand CSS. When they get a new comp they just keep reinventing the wheel, when they should be reusing what already exists.
Posted: Thu 16 Jun 2011 11:46 a.m.
@Julien Etienne
You wrote it because you think you know it all.
This video assumes you know all of that and it goes even further, she is talking about best methodology for larger scale sites, that's ger whole thing, have you seen her presentations about OOCSS ?
Seems like a lotta people watching these videos don't really get it (think small sites).
I'd like to see you build the css for facebook and keep the css small.
Posted: Fri 24 Jun 2011 7:18 a.m.
@Paco My comment wasn't directed at the video.
It was some general basic advice for whoever could use it. Common sense should tell you to ignore it if it's not for you right?
Why argue over CSS, it's not scaling clusters & even then those communities are humble.
Avoid saying stuff like "I'd like to see you build the css for facebook" I didn't know you knew me so well lol.
Posted: Wed 13 Jul 2011 8:22 a.m.
Great talk, terrible camera work.
Only just found out about OOCSS the other day and really intrigued. Obviously, anything that might help in the streamlining, optimising, and generally making code easier to work with for other developers has to be a good thing, right?
I can kind of half visualise it's application and the methodology Nicole outlines above, and I'm sure she's speaking sense, but if I'm completely honest, I'm struggling to understand how to implement it and what the difference is in this approach and 'conventional' approaches to coding CSS. There must be a difference, otherwise the code-saving statistics she mentioned wouldn't be possible.
Maybe that's the point though, when all you know is a 'best practice' it's sometimes difficult to visualise how to implement something differently (even if it's a better way of doing it). I'm going to persevere though because it obviously has a positive application. There must be some good examples out there (anyone?)? It strikes me that setting it up in retrospect might be quite difficult to do also, so would have to be decided on pretty early on?
Also, she mentions 'code bloat'... I think there might be some 'ego bloat' creeping into this thread, increasing the blog size unnecessarily.
Posted: Sat 06 Aug 2011 2:14 a.m.
WHOA, I caught an interpreter on the right, wish he could be in the entire video! I'm deaf and LOVE to learn about CSS and how it can help me better design accessible websites!
Posted: Thu 01 Sep 2011 12:00 a.m.
@Julien Etienne: Totally disagree on point #5 (well, half of it). I don't know why you say frameworks & wysiwyg. They are totally unrelated. I would totally recommend using frameworks.
1) They come with documentation. If you add someone new to your team, you don't have to have them read or grep CSS files to find common styles. The most common will be documented.
2) There are so many common styles you don't have to code by hand. You just need to learn the documentation.
3) They are generally open source. They can establish best practicing and have the benefit of many users contributing to come up with the best solutions.
That said, I don't have a suggestion for a CSS framework, but I suppose if you follow Nicole (this is the first I've heard of her) OOCSS would be a good place to start (also the first I've heard of this CSS framework)
Posted: Tue 15 Nov 2011 5:29 a.m.
Ryan Sharp
Jesus, it's amazing how some people can take an insanely easy language like CSS and make it look so deep and esoteric. You're blowing it way out of proportion. Even 12-year-olds figure this stuff out within days of starting.
Posted: Sun 01 May 2011 12:00 a.m.