The Future Of CSS: Embracing The Machine

The Future Of CSS: Embracing The Machine

• By Inayaili de Leon
• Designers hold CSS close to their hearts. It’s just code, but it is also what makes our carefully crafted designs come to life. Thoughtful CSS is CSS that respects our designs, that is handcrafted with precision. The common conception among Web designers is that a good style sheet is created by hand, each curly bracket meticulously placed, each vendor prefix typed in manually.

read more @ : http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/07/the-future-of-css-embracing-the-machine/

The World Of Developers

Developers and programmers are already inclined towards automation. Developers instinctively avoid reinventing the wheel. They understand the need to automate production (at least some stages of it); they understand that hand-crafted code is not needed at every step of the process.

Even if you are a great front-end developer who knows JavaScript like the back of your hand, you still defer a lot of your work to jQuery or some other library. Even if you’re able to write the code yourself, the time you’d save by not doing that frees you to deal with more significant problems. The gains in writing a script from scratch are no match for the gains in being able to focus attention on problems that no machine or automated process can solve.

jQuery, a well-known developer’s tool.

The skills and knowledge you’ve gathered through the years are not in vain, though. This knowledge is what makes you the best person to decide whether to choose jQuery; it’s what makes you able to adjust a plugin that doesn’t quite do what you need; and it’s what makes you capable of determining the best tool for the job.

The Wrong Attitude

Web designers don’t approve of these kinds of shortcuts. This way of thinking doesn’t translate to CSS; in the world of CSS, taking these “shortcuts” is not well regarded.

We CSS authors have a list of dirty words that we avoid saying when we’re speaking with fellow Web designer friends. For example, when someone says they’ve used a CSS framework, the apology immediately follows: “It wasn’t our fault.”

Principles such as DRY (don’t repeat yourself) are not present in CSS.

DRY states that “Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system.” This applies not only to code but to every aspect of a product, such as design itself. When DRY principles are followed, we’re supposed to end up with products that are of higher quality and easier to maintain.

read more @ http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/07/the-future-of-css-embracing-the-machine/

text taken from : http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/07/the-future-of-css-embracing-the-machine/