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I had a conversation with my CTO regaring using CSS Grid, and the question that I heard the most was “Why use grid, that’s not supported in old browsers if we have to write flexbox fallbacks anyway? Why don’t we just build with flexbox?”
And it got me thinking. A big advantage of CSS Grid for me is writing less code. But if I have to write fallbacks, I’m effectively writing grid code AND flexbox code, which is more work. So that argument kinda makes sense I guess?
What would you answer to that?
Here is some arguments why.
You could do a lot more with design. Think about all the workarounds you need to implement in order to have something simple as 100vh... Your designers will be happy if they have you on their team.
Lot less duct taping solutions, see above.
New features makes your code better, maintenance will be a lot better, you code in general will be more clean. This actually means less work in the feature.
Performance, browsers that support new features will have lot less code to use, this is not true ofc for every new feature out there.
More work with fallback solution, yes, that might be true. But if you are always writing the same fallback solutions to the same features then you are doing something wrong, search the web, there might be a solution already there, if not make your own internally and reuse it on other projects, thus you will have to make a fallback solution only once.
You want your developers happy, if there is a way to use new features (and there is almost always a way), you should use it. Motivation kind of a thing.
If NOT then those features will never get used anyway since people will stick the old ways thus there is no need for browsers to implement in the new versions because guess what no one is using those new features thus we don't need them. But we all know we need them.
New features will eventually becomes standard (if we actually use them), you want to have team that is already proficient in those new technologies, thus you can sell yourself better to the client.
As for grid css layout, check this one --> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_Grid_Layout/CSS_Grid_and_Progressive_Enhancement
Also, this kind of question is better fit for the Quora or something similar, not stack.
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I use a website that recently changed its layout, which I (and a lot of other people) extremely dislike. I checked over the changes, and I believe that most of the changes involve a simple css change.
I own a domain that I would like to display the contents of this website, but with my own css, however I am unfamiliar with the web. I am open to all solutions that would do this (embedding, reflecting, etc.) I would like to do this without paying money.
*Note: the reason I am avoiding using a userstyle is because I would like to be able to access this website on any computer, anywhere, anytime, and let others do the same.
The website in question is http://www.scarsdaleschools.org/, and I would like it to look like this.
I know there might be some conflicts with the using the old css on the current website, it is okay as long as it is usable.
I will give an additional 50 point bounty if the solution does not involve me hosting my own website.
Clarification: I am not looking to create a mirror for the website, I would like a client to access scarsdaleschools.org directly, only replace all css documents with my own css, thus all content is accessed directly from scarsdaleschools.org.
EDIT: This was put on hold as too broad. I am looking for a method by which I can accomplish what I am trying to do.
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There are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long for this format. Please add details to narrow down the answer set or to isolate an issue that can be answered in a few paragraphs.
Chances are, there is probably only one way (or a small few ways) that can answer my question. Regardless, my question does not require a few paragraphs, but just a simple name of a technique (and hopefully a small explanation of how I would use this technique).
Well if you don't mind having to put some insane amounts of !important in your CSS for it, the iframe tag is actually powerful enough to do it (doesn't even need the proposed-then-cancelled seamless attribute).
I'd still suggest using something like a portable browser on a flashdrive/CD, and having your userstyles installed on that, instead, as it's a little less red-flag-inducing (your site may be flagged as a potential attack site w/ the iframe trick). Added bonuses, it dodges corpsec spyware and update restrictions, and has all your bookmarks/addons.
But simply iframeing the website from your own with your stylesheet (loaded with !importants) will suffice, so long as you can get around any framekiller they use (if any).
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I'm creating a board game in JavaScript (just to help learn the language) and I was wondering whether to use tables or divs (and CSS) for the board.
From what I understand, with tables the browser reads through the code twice. Once for the structure/layout and then again for the data.
I realise the page will only be loaded once so it won't make too much of a difference, but I was just wondering whether a game board would be an acceptable use of tables, since it's usually reserved for tabular data, or should tables be shunned altogether, even though divs require more code?
Using a <table> element to describe a game board is perfectly acceptable in my book, for example a chess or checkers board, Game of Life, etc, as (to an extent) the game state can be both represented-as and interpreted-as tabular data.
Use table-layout: fixed to have a table that uses a more efficient layout algorithm that's a lot faster and predicable, however can lead to a poor layout unless you've manually optimised it (usually by setting manual column widths).
The algorithms used are described here: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/tables.html#width-layout
I think this question mainly depends on what you plan on doing with this board game: Is it for ONLY practicing JS (meaning no one else will see it) or will it be later used for other people to utilize it?
In my opinion, we all need to start somewhere, so it is acceptable to use a table in your creation of the board game if you are looking to experiment. In fact, you shouldn't need to worry about optimization if you are only using this to enhance knowledge and for your own personal use.
However, in another offset opinion.. I would suggest you begin to look at the idea of using divs/uls/lis to create a table, as this practice is really invaluable and it is honestly a good idea to begin grasping this idea early rather than later. It will also give you the feel for how CSS can represent multiple things in various ways and how you can also manipulate CSS to really do whatever you want with it.
If you are planning to have this game made public so other people can play, you will want to look into what will optimize the speed or performance of your website. This is where the links that were provided could be of use. In all reality, everybody has their own opinion on this matter and it will be a constant fight until there is solidified evidence on this matter. I would imagine by the time they decide which layout is better, CSS will already be upgrading and optimizing to its fullest capabilities.
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Hey everyone I just bought the master cs5 suite mostly for design purposes, and now I have a lot of peoPle telling me I should start using DW instead of hand coding my HTML/CSS because it will speed up my production and it's what all design shops use and is an industry standard . I was curious if this is accurate and how much would it really speed things up?
I (personally) disagree. I use DW in CS5 for code editing view only (it has the best markup/code highlighting I've found); the generated markup is not great, so I don't use it, nor am I highly trained in the workflow it entails. A lot of designers will not understand hand coding markup, but that's usually because they don't understand how to or don't care to do so because it's not what they get paid to do.
However, if you're working on (a) lower level, you have a better understanding of your markup/styles/code. It may take slightly/significantly more effort (depending on your abilities hand coding), but I personally think it's worth the effort in many cases. However, I am not a piece worker nor am I paid on deadlines.
There are other reasons I use DW (WebDAV support, searching capabilities), but I will likely never use it to author my markup. Also note I don't pay for it.
Used unwisely it won't speed it up at all. You'll spend more time pulling out DW's extraneous code. Use parts of DW that will make you faster like snippets (for storing snippets of code you use frequently) and find and replace (using f&r with regex is a very useful skill). I use it to cram in table markup quickly (for data tables). Dragging files over for internal links is quite nice and the keyboard shortcuts help (you can create custom ones).
That said, I like the product at work. Check in and check out has been very helpful there with multiple coders/designers.
So, there are plenty of parts in DW that will speed up your hand coding. Root them out.
Dreamweaver CS5.5 made a lot of improvements over previous versions. As a designer you may appreciate Live Preview and the design integration's. As a coding IDE, it's still considered sub-standard and many developers choose to go another route. I use PHPdesinger 7 for ~$70, its got in-line xdebug integration and pretty good intellisense for PHP, CI, and jQuery. I use DW5.5 and PHPdesigner and I find it's far less bloated then Dreamweaver for what I use it for, coding with PHP/Jquery and web API's. I also feel that it's closer to how I worked before using advanced IDE's like this, coding on my Macbook with Coda. But if your designing web pages you may like Dreamweaver better.
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When you learn HTML and so forth nowadays, the mantra is always "Clean code = better code".
So why do sites like Mobile Me and Google and Facebook all use huge amounts of tables and other not-semantically correct code?
Thanks!
Because people still use IE6, unfortunately, and it's so incredibly bad at CSS as to make it almost worthless for CSS selectors of any sophistication. Until IE6 is gone and dead dead dead in the cold ground, you're still going to see a lot of this.
If you could see what SharePoint generates, you would probably go into seizures.
Clean code is better, yes.
But working code is much much better )
Because sometimes that's the path of least resistance. It's not always about being ideologically pure, it's about being pragmatic and getting the job done in this crazy, multi-browser, multi-platform world.
Because it's easier.
While the purist in me will also strive for semantic tags and external CSS for layout, the pragmatist in me need to get this site up by 6pm (so I can go home to my wife and a nice warm dinner!) and there's just this little problem with [insert browser here*] that could easily be solved with a bit of conditional CSS, or a table or something.
There are other reasons for high-traffic sites like Google and Facebook to use inline CSS and js: bandwidth. Every external file you reference is one extra round-trip to the server to fetch. Of course, that doesn't really explain the style="xxx" tags as opposed to just inline <style> tags, but it still reduces the size of the page. Also, while caching does tend to reduce the number of trips, there are still a significant number of requests that are made with a "clean" cache that you still want to optimise for that case.
Not always IE (but mostly is)
I had an affiliate marketing client the other day who wanted me to make him a web template where he could go in and edit it with Adobe Dreamweaver (some app I don't use because I'm a Linux user). So, being the web-savvy guy I am, I did it in XHTML with cross-platform CSS that I have learned over the years, using DIVs primarily, and only using TABLES for form field alignment simply because of the 80/20 rule. It was lean code in as few lines as possible, loaded super fast, and worked on all browsers from IE6 on up.
But then I handed it off to him, and he was visibly frustrated and asked me to make changes. He didn't like the CSS because he couldn't cut and paste sections to another page and have the styling carry over. Instead, he wanted me to switch everything to inline styles. Next, he couldn't edit the floating DIVs very well, and would undo my cross-platform work I had done, so he wanted it reverted back to tables. The end result was XHTML + CSS for the shell of the page that centers everything into the middle and adds the fancy graphics around the page. Then, I used PHP "include" separation for headers and footers. The final part was the middle of the page, and that was his domain. I had to compose it in TABLEs with inline styles. At that point, he was happy and I had a compromise.
So, keep this in mind that there are some cases where you have to use TABLE formatting and inline styles because that's all the client really knows how to manipulate.
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I'm pretty sure most of us are familiar with the concept of a project's requirements changing after it starts, this becomes more and more of an issue the less the client knows about how things work and the closer you work with them.
How then can I design a system (specifically a website but general advice will probably be best here) so that smallish changes can be made, are there any programming strategies that deal with this issue?
All the normal oo principles apply here, reduce coupling, increase cohesion, don't repeat yourself etc. This will make sure you have a flexible and extendible code base.
Apart from that don't try to preempt change. Apply YAGNI (You aint gonna need it) everywhere. Only build stuff you know your users need. Dont build stuff you think you're going to need. You're more likely to guess wrong and then you've got a bunch of code that's probably only in the way.
I think the biggest thing is to make sure you have a comprehensive test suite. That way you can make changes confidently when needed and know when it breaks.
Having no experience with PHP, take this with a pinch of salt.
But it's all about knowing change will come. So when you are coding and start wanting to hack things to get them done, stop and think "what if I need to change this again?".
Now, I know php is a scripting language, but you must be able to library off code right? Thats the best thing to do, keep the UI (the web page) as LIGHT as possible, for the most part 1 or two method calls.
If you have fancy rendering logic, library it. Create a nice look that may be common? Look at what might change (colour scheme etc.), library it. You're already putting all your core code into libraries though right? ;)
If you always work on building your library, all you need to then do when the change request comes in is "find the right book for it".. Whats cool about what we do is that if the book is well written, you can easily add annotations to it ;)
This is basically what I am doing at work at the moment, my "project" is to build the platform that future apps will be working on, so this is really my main focus. :)
Update
Mendelt made a good point on applying YAGNI, with all of the above, don't just write stuff to library it but if you think for a second that the sexy little table you just created (because a client wanted it) might be used again, then it's time to think about making it more usable. Some obscure function for a one-off client should be done ad-hoc.
Well, I'd try to tackle this problem from the other side:
More communication with the customer/user.
I have been there myself, programming things that were not wanted or not properly communicated and having to redo lots of code. It would have been prevented with more communication or rather: with more of the right communication.
Aside from that:
Allow Users to change the color and ask them now and then, where to place a button and the probability, they will be satisfied with this "great level of control" is quite good. And then they won't want you to redo real features. Yes, I am sarcastic about this.
I suggest using a tried and tested framework for your language of choice. Most good frameworks will have been designed to accommodate a multitude of scenarios.
First, you should identify the aspects that will have a high change probability. These aspects should be 'abstracted out'. A classic example is the style of your website (i.e. through css). But you could even so define a 'presenter' class that lays out the specific elements of a web page.
The hard thing is making a correct estimate of the change probability. But that's up to you :)
This is where frameworks come into play.
If all the baseline, background, business-as-usual is in the framework, then your application is the extensions, special-cases and add-ons.
The framework is already designed and built for change. Your stuff is the change that the frame was designed to accept.
When change occurs, you will respond to change with some combination of modifying the framework configuration and rewriting your stuff that plugs into the framework. You cope with change by not focusing on the default, background stuff. Delegate that to someone else -- the framework authors.