Retaining CSS

[Brandon Dorsey]

In regards to CSS, once you have the core concepts down such as, specificity, selectors, properties, etc; is it better to be able to design and mockup from scratch? Or is it more viable to just put certain styles in snippets or mixins, as long as you understand what the specified properties do, to cut down the learning curve and development time? For example, learning a new tutorial to on how to create a responsive grid or standard css menu. From my perspective, it seems impossible to retain everything you learn past the fundamentals.

[smanaher]

Good question Brandon,

In my opinion, you can organize what you know however it helps you use it. You are right that there are a ton of things to remember. For example you might get use to using specific code all the time and when you need to do something outside of those habits, you might have to look it up. I wouldn’t feel bad about doing this. Some programmers may be doing their work so much that they seldom need to reference something whereas others may need to reference more often.

I kind of compare this to being a lawyer. Lawyer need access to a law library in order to do research for cases. They know how the basic process of law works and they may remember a lot right off hand regarding their area of practice however invariably they will need to look something up.

How you organize the information you need to know if you don’t memorize it will also depend on what you are using to develop with on a regular basis. For example if you were using a CMS most of the time, you might not need to remember that much code and you might have specific snippets set aside for easy reference. By contrast, if you are coding websites from scratch every time, you may not rely on reference material as much because you use the code so often.

If you are looking for speed in building pages, this might be of some use to you,

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/style/

Best,

Shawn

[molona]

It depends on the kidn of work you're doing. Sometimes using pre-built CSS style sheets (whether built by you or not) is good. It definately speeds development and shorterns delivery time if you follow the structure suggested by those style sheets, of course.

But if the website is complex, sometimes is better to think the structure twice and then create the CSS style sheet from scratch.

[prince55l]

if you are thinking of creating css styles from scratch here is a good css generator to consider, just like the one mentioned above, http://www.cssbuttoncode.com

[Brandon Dorsey]

It depends on the kidn of work you're doing. Sometimes using pre-built CSS style sheets (whether built by you or not) is good. It definately speeds development and shorterns delivery time if you follow the structure suggested by those style sheets, of course.

But if the website is complex, sometimes is better to think the structure twice and then create the CSS style sheet from scratch.

I understand that using a framework can drastically speed up development time, but the downside to using them is that it is not your code. Also you have to abide by the rules of that particular framework. I just thought It would benefit someone like me to understand the principles before moving on the frameworks. I personally believe that those frameworks are for people who can already build there own from scratch, but want to cut down on development time.

[molona]

I understand that using a framework can drastically speed up development time, but the downside to using them is that it is not your code. Also you have to abide by the rules of that particular framework. I just thought It would benefit someone like me to understand the principles before moving on the frameworks. I personally believe that those frameworks are for people who can already build there own from scratch, but want to cut down on development time.

Agree 100%

[dresden_phoenix]

You also have to think of it this way,even if you use a frame work ,only an understanding of actual CSS will let you maximize the FW's full potentia; well that, and an understanding of the framework itself. So in essence, you double the thing you have to learn in the end.