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CSS-Styleguide

A few simple guidelines and ideas I wrote down for myself to craft consistent and maintainable CSS. // This is a living document and is subject to change.

General things to consider

  • Think OOCSS and build reusable modules and patterns
  • Don't be afraid of additional non-semantic div's and classes if they make sense and help organizing and modularizing the code. Think separation of content and container. #OOCSS
  • Responsive Design is more than just squishing the content. Think Progressive Enhancement/Responsible Responsive Design
  • Start mobile first
  • Use inline SVGs if possible

Declaration order

Keeping a consitent declaration order throughout the all CSS files helps organization and speeds up the development process.

.class {
    /* Positioning */
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    right: 0;
    bottom: 0;
    left: 0;
    z-index: 1;

    /* Box-Model and Display */
    display: block;
    overflow: hidden;
    width: 100px;
    height: 50px;
    margin-top: 10px;
    margin-right: 10px;
    margin-bottom: 20px;
    margin-left: 10px;
    padding: 10px;

    /* Typography */
    color: #000;
    font-family: Georgia, serif;
    font-size: 1rem;
    line-height: 1.3;

    /* Visuals */
    background-color: #ccc;
    border: 1px solid #000;
    border-radius: 3px;
    opacity: .8;
}

Comments notation

Keep files as simple, short and modular as possible. Each one has a heading:

/*------------------------------------*\
    File Heading
\*------------------------------------*/

Each section in a file has a heading:

/**
* Section Heading or multi-line comment
*/
.class {
    position: relative;
}

Each section is followed by two blank lines. Sometimes one just needs a short comment:

/* Simple one-line comment */
.class {
    color: red;
}

Always combine all SCSS files into one CSS file and minify it

style.scss:

/**
 * Assets
 */
@import "_assets/vars";
@import "_assets/mixins";
@import "_assets/normalize";
@import "_assets/fonts";


/**
 * Modules
 */
@import "_modules/site-nav";
@import "_modules/ad-box";

/* and so on... */

This will result in style.min.css.

Use the BEM-style for class names, variables and all sorts of things

.nav {
    /* ... */
}

.nav--small {
    /* ... */
}

.nav__item {
    /* ... */
}

.nav__item--new {
    /* ... */
}

$blue: #0e649a;
$blue__dark: #083654;
$blue__dark--hover: #235f85;

$header__height: 50px;
$header__height--fixed: 20px;

Read more.

Don't nest deeper than three levels

.class {
    margin-bottom: 20px;

    .class-2 {
        background-color: blue;

        p {
            font-size: 1.3rem;
        }
    }
}

Don't use id's for styling, only use classes and abstain from styling html elements

Do:

.class {
    color: #000;
}

Don't do:

#id {
    color: #000;
}

header {
    background-color: blue;
}

div.ad-box {
    border: 1px solid red;
}

But you can select html elements like p, blockquote, and other text-based ones.

Prefixed classes or id's which are used by Javscript

<a class="more-link js_more-link">Read more...</a>

<nav class="page-nav" id="js_page-nav"></nav>

Add Sass @extends at the beginning of properties

.class {
    @extend %clearfix;

    padding: 10px;
    font-size: 1.3rem;
}

Add UTF-8 charset

@charset "UTF-8";

Four spaces indenting

Sublime Text Settings:

"tab_size": 4,
"translate_tabs_to_spaces": true,

Line length: 80 characters

Sublime Text Setting:

"rulers": [80]

Multiple selectors, each in new line

.class-1,
.class-2,
.class-3 {
    font-size: 1.5rem;
}

Don't use !important

An exception could be a state style like

.is-false {
    color: red !important;
}

Don't use shorthand notations if possible

If you only want to set one value, be explicit, don't set values you don't have to.

Use:

.class {
    margin-bottom: 20px;
}

Don't use:

.class {
    margin: 0 0 20px 0;
}

Omit units and leading zeros

.class {
    top: 0;
    opacity: .7;
}

Use Hex color codes shorthand notation and lowercase letters

.class {
    color: #fff;
    background-color: #000;
}

Don't use magic numbers

... which just happen to work for no particular reason.

.class {
    position: relative;
    top: 3px;
}

No prefixing, let autoprefixer do the work

.class {
    box-sizing: border-box;
}

Will be automatically outputted as

.class {
    -webkit-box-sizing: border-box;
       -moz-box-sizing: border-box;
            box-sizing: border-box;
}

Use a Sass mixin for site-wide breakpoints

And don't name breakpoints after actual devices like iphone or tablet. Use arbitrary names.

@mixin breakpoint($point) {
    @if $point == bp1 {
        @media (min-width: 460px) {
            @content;
        }
    }
    @if $point == bp2 {
        @media (min-width: 640px) {
            @content;
        }
    }
    @elseif $point == retina {
        @media (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 1.25),
               (min-resolution: 120dpi)
               (-o-min-device-pixel-ratio: 5/4) {
            @content;
        }
    }
}

Nest media queries/Sass breakpoint mixin inside of selectors

.class {
    padding: 10px;

    @media (min-width: 500px) {
        padding: 20px;
    }
}

.class {
    font-size: 2rem;

    @include breakpoint(bp1) {
        font-size: 1.5rem;
    }
}

Use rem with px fallback and px value for body base font-size

THIS IS NOT YET TESTED AND USED:

$font-size__base: 16;
$font-size__body: font-size__base +px;

@mixin font-size($size) {
    font-size: $size +px;
    font-size: $size / $font-size__base +rem;
}

body {
    font-size: $font-size__body +px;
}

.class {
    @include font-size(20);
}

/* CSS Output: */
.class {
    font-size: 20px; /* Fallback */
    font-size: 1.25rem;
}