Comments on: Weekly Release Blog #40: Evolving Site Design Using CSS http://exortech.com/blog/2009/08/31/weekly-release-blog-40-evolving-site-design-using-css/ Peripatetic thinking Sat, 15 Jan 2011 18:20:06 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: David Hirtle http://exortech.com/blog/2009/08/31/weekly-release-blog-40-evolving-site-design-using-css/comment-page-1/#comment-439 David Hirtle Tue, 01 Sep 2009 07:32:11 +0000 http://exortech.com/blog/?p=209#comment-439 The key to maintainability seems to be avoiding dependencies between styles because at some point someone (possibly you, weeks later) will come along and change a depended-upon style. But to avoid dependencies, you end up duplicating styles, which also creates maintainability problems. For example, when forking a class (as described in #4), you'll probably end up duplicating a lot of styles. On the other hand, overriding styles (as in #5) would create dependencies. Here's an interesting discussion about Redundancy vs. Dependency: http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2005/01/20/redundancy_v/ I think the described approach will work if everyone adheres to it. I wonder if there will be problems with people using different top-level classes, though. For example, what if someone wraps form.standard in div.container and starts using that as the top-level element? The key to maintainability seems to be avoiding dependencies between styles because at some point someone (possibly you, weeks later) will come along and change a depended-upon style.

But to avoid dependencies, you end up duplicating styles, which also creates maintainability problems. For example, when forking a class (as described in #4), you’ll probably end up duplicating a lot of styles. On the other hand, overriding styles (as in #5) would create dependencies.

Here’s an interesting discussion about Redundancy vs. Dependency:
http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2005/01/20/redundancy_v/

I think the described approach will work if everyone adheres to it. I wonder if there will be problems with people using different top-level classes, though. For example, what if someone wraps form.standard in div.container and starts using that as the top-level element?

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