Relearn CSS layout • Hacker News Board

Re: Relearn CSS layout

#101

Post by danShumway » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 1:14 AM UTC

karaokeyoga wrote: post #92

danShumway wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work as a web developer for an enterprise-level software company. Experimented a bit with CSS-in-JS, which is designed to get rid of this separation, and I found it to ultimately be harder to maintain than SCSS. This process was also what got me hooked on BEM after being initially pretty skeptical about whether it had any real value. I now believe that BEM would meet the needs of most teams, with the exception of a…

As a front-end dev working on the web for roughly twenty years, I concur. I was late to the game with BEM and initially bristled since it goes against patterns I thought were working for me. Plus, it's not exactly terse. But, it won me over. I also agree with your comments on CSS-in-JS ... in practical terms, I feel BEM, properly executed, can handle the CSS portion of a large majority of projects.

I always stuck BEM in the same category as other more dogmatic software approaches -- nice in theory, but not particularly practical for everyday development.

Then I tried in a practical, everyday development setting and found out I was just wrong :)

Re: Relearn CSS layout

#102

Post by mmorris » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 1:15 AM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #89

sktrdie wrote: post #73

To me an evident thing in UI development is that separating stylesheet from layout isn't really a thing anymore and the benefits of this separation aren't really that clear. Things like SwiftUI and React are showing that declarative UIs can be built by tying the style to the layout and allow for much better accessibility, tooling, overall thinking of how UIs work. So to me CSS feels a bit outdated since big companies…

I work as a web developer for an enterprise-level software company. Experimented a bit with CSS-in-JS, which is designed to get rid of this separation, and I found it to ultimately be harder to maintain than SCSS. This process was also what got me hooked on BEM after being initially pretty skeptical about whether it had any real value. I now believe that BEM would meet the needs of most teams, with the exception of a…

I've never loved CSS-in-JS, but I do love CSS modules, which allows you to use proper CSS, while solving the biggest flaw in CSS - its global nature.

We import shared styles for typography, color, and some layout basics, but each component gets its own CSS file.

Used to be a hardcore Sass lover, and CSS modules took a small amount of getting used to, but worth it in the long run.

Re: Relearn CSS layout

#103

Post by reaperducer » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 1:25 AM UTC

sktrdie wrote: post #73

To me an evident thing in UI development is that separating stylesheet from layout isn't really a thing anymore and the benefits of this separation aren't really that clear. Things like SwiftUI and React are showing that declarative UIs can be built by tying the style to the layout and allow for much better accessibility, tooling, overall thinking of how UIs work. So to me CSS feels a bit outdated since big companies…

to me CSS feels a bit outdated since big companies are definitely moving away from this separation. How does HN feel about this?

As with anything in technology, it depends on the task and what you're trying to achieve.

The size of the site is a major factor, as is how optimized the owner wants it to be.

Saying that "big companies are definitely moving away" from anything is always going to be a gross and inaccurate generalization.

Re: Relearn CSS layout

#104

Post by threehams » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 1:28 AM UTC

vedantroy wrote: post #4

Out of curiosity, why doesn't the stack layout use flexbox? It seems like flexbox is the perfect fit for such a layout.

If other browsers besides Firefox add support for the gap property, Flexbox will be perfect for this. The owl approach has some subtle issues, like not taking into account elements which show/hide based on breakpoint.

Re: Relearn CSS layout

#105

Post by BurningFrog » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 1:33 AM UTC

meerita wrote: post #94

danShumway wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work as a web developer for an enterprise-level software company. Experimented a bit with CSS-in-JS, which is designed to get rid of this separation, and I found it to ultimately be harder to maintain than SCSS. This process was also what got me hooked on BEM after being initially pretty skeptical about whether it had any real value. I now believe that BEM would meet the needs of most teams, with the exception of a…

Show us a pastebin of your compiled CSS. I can tell you from now your CSS is bloated with the uncountable properties and classes that repeat the same fixes and structures. You can program functional CSS and get better in way.

But does bloated CSS matter?

If a human isn't going to read the CSS and the computer handles it without performance problem, I say no.

Those are of course two quite important ifs!

Re: Relearn CSS layout

#106

Post by mixmastamyk » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 1:37 AM UTC

codedokode wrote: post #14

mixmastamyk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Win7 and IE9 are both EOL in six months. Makes sense to drop in new articles.

HTML/CSS was designed to be forward/backward compatible and not to be written only for version of Safari installed on dev's macbook. This is against the spirit of HTML.

Don’t believe that argument can be used in favor of IE, which was never standards based.

Re: Relearn CSS layout

#107

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 1:45 AM UTC

sktrdie wrote: post #73

To me an evident thing in UI development is that separating stylesheet from layout isn't really a thing anymore and the benefits of this separation aren't really that clear. Things like SwiftUI and React are showing that declarative UIs can be built by tying the style to the layout and allow for much better accessibility, tooling, overall thinking of how UIs work. So to me CSS feels a bit outdated since big companies…

> separating stylesheet from layout isn't really a thing anymore

It never was, layout is part of stylesheets. Do you mean separating content from presentation?

Re: Relearn CSS layout

#108

Post by Bahamut » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 2:10 AM UTC

sktrdie wrote: post #75

Bahamut wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not quite necessarily true - I work at a tech giant and we've opted for using scss still & are quite happy with our choice.

Is your company actually building a platform for developers to build apps? Because that's what Apple is doing and they shifted away from using paradigms like CSS.

I work for Apple.

Re: Relearn CSS layout

#109

Post by oefrha » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 2:18 AM UTC

sktrdie wrote: post #73

To me an evident thing in UI development is that separating stylesheet from layout isn't really a thing anymore and the benefits of this separation aren't really that clear. Things like SwiftUI and React are showing that declarative UIs can be built by tying the style to the layout and allow for much better accessibility, tooling, overall thinking of how UIs work. So to me CSS feels a bit outdated since big companies…

Separation of structure/content and presentation is great for textual content splintered with a few images, so it shines in blogs, news sites (in theory) and other types of informational sites (like documentation). I can give my blog a brand new look without touching any HTML markup, which is awesome.

This separation does get in the way in certain modern web apps, where content is basically scrambled garbage without proper presentation.

Re: Relearn CSS layout

#110

Post by wyqydsyq » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 2:41 AM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #89

sktrdie wrote: post #73

To me an evident thing in UI development is that separating stylesheet from layout isn't really a thing anymore and the benefits of this separation aren't really that clear. Things like SwiftUI and React are showing that declarative UIs can be built by tying the style to the layout and allow for much better accessibility, tooling, overall thinking of how UIs work. So to me CSS feels a bit outdated since big companies…

I work as a web developer for an enterprise-level software company. Experimented a bit with CSS-in-JS, which is designed to get rid of this separation, and I found it to ultimately be harder to maintain than SCSS. This process was also what got me hooked on BEM after being initially pretty skeptical about whether it had any real value. I now believe that BEM would meet the needs of most teams, with the exception of a…

Despite trying using it a few times I've never seen the appeal in BEM, it's just bringing excessive and redundant verbosity to CSS class names as well as introducing unnecessary complexity in maintenance (e.g. if you change a class's name you need to also need to apply the change to any derivative class names)