Kevin Marks
You may be joking, but look at twitter and medium’s css http://www.kevinmarks.com/u-means-style.html
marmelab/universal.css: The only CSS you will ever need
Ensure that your class names never go out of sync with your style declarations with this one simple trick:
Take any CSS rule you want to apply, replace : by -, and dots by -dot-, and you get the name of the corresponding universal css classname.
The only thing missing is immutability, so I would suggest also putting !important after each declaration in the CSS. Voila! No more specificity battles.
Responses
Related links
Dear Developer, The Web Isn’t About You | sonniesedge.co.uk
This is absolutely brilliant!
Forgive my excitement, but this transcript of Charlie’s talk is so, so good—an equal mix of history and practical advice. Once you’ve read it, share it. I want everyone to have the pleasure of reading this inspiring piece!
It is this flirty declarative nature makes HTML so incredibly robust. Just look at this video. It shows me pulling chunks out of the Amazon homepage as I browse it, while the page continues to run.
Let’s just stop and think about that, because we take it for granted. I’m pulling chunks of code out of a running computer application, AND IT IS STILL WORKING.
Just how… INCREDIBLE is that? Can you imagine pulling random chunks of code out of the memory of your iPhone or Windows laptop, and still expecting it to work? Of course not! But with HTML, it’s a given.
My Modern CSS Reset | jakelazaroff.com
I like the approach here: logical properties and sensible default type and spacing.
I wasted a day on CSS selector performance to make a website load 2ms faster | Trys Mudford
Picture me holding Trys back and telling him, “Leave it alone, mate, it’s not worth it!”
Introducing TODS – a typographic and OpenType default stylesheet | Clagnut by Richard Rutter
This is a very handy piece of work by Rich:
The idea is to set sensible typographic defaults for use on prose (a column of text), making particular use of the font features provided by OpenType. The main principle is that it can be used as starting point for all projects, so doesn’t include design-specific aspects such as font choice, type scale or layout (including how you might like to set the line-length).
What is Utility-First CSS?: HeydonWorks
Heydon does a very good job of explaining why throwing away the power of selectors makes no sense.
Utility-first detractors complain a lot about how verbose this is and, consequently, how ugly. And it is indeed. But you’d forgive it that if it actually solved a problem, which it doesn’t. It is unequivocally an inferior way of making things which are alike look alike, as you should. It is and can only be useful for reproducing inconsistent design, wherein all those repeated values would instead differ.
He’s also right on the nose in explaining why something as awful at Tailwind could get so popular:
But CSS isn’t new, it’s only good. And in this backwards, bullshit-optimized economy of garbage and nonsense, good isn’t bad enough.
Related posts
Ubiquity and consistency
Under-engineering, over-engineering, wombling free.
Progressive disclosure defaults
If you’re going to toggle the display of content with CSS, make sure the more complex selector does the hiding, not the showing.
Making the Patterns Day website
The joy of getting hands-on with HTML and CSS.
Culture and style
Styling a document about The Culture novels of Iain M Banks.
Alternative stylesheets
Why do browsers that don’t implement stylesheet switching still download alternative stylesheets?