Ad-hoc Meetup Tonight: Discuss Standardizing Intra-organizational CSS

[Alex S. Jones]

Ryan Joy and I will be at the Gingerman tonight (wednesday the 18th) around 6 to talk about how to best organize, standardize and normalize CSS within a large organization/across multiple sites. This isn't a presentation, rather a discussion amongst any and all interested in talking about the topic.

Please join us if this sounds interesting!

Cheers,

Alex Jones
www.SilverSpider.com
www.twitter.com/BaldMan
www.RefreshAustin.org

[Keith Aric Hall]

Aww man! Sorry I am going to miss this one. This is an issue I am currently dealing with. Currently, I am one of the few people with CSS expertise on my product team, yet we have a ton of developer that contribute to the CSS for our product. Developing standards is something that we did not do early enough. We tried to institute an OOCSS approach later on, but it was a bit too late in the game to do it any justice.

We've learned a lot along these lines and have a much better idea of how we need to "eat this elephant" the next go around. In particular to me that means a lot of work upfront. Dissecting the UI to determine common objects and their various uses, standardizing naming conventions, namespacing classes, etc. to come up with a truly workable OOCSS approach. Not to be overlooked is the use of thirdparty frameworks like extjs, dojo, etc. which create their own markup and can really create challenges in maintaining clean, standardized code.

Take lots of notes please! I have a vested interest in the results of this conversation.

kah

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[Keith Aric Hall]

I should note that we did come up with a basic CSS styleguide at the outset of the project, but it was not thorough enough. We should have done a better job of analyzing the UI design.

kah

[Ryan Joy]

Keith: I'm pretty much always up for tech talk, listening to how
others are solving problems, and, of course, beers.

This is an issue any organization faces as they increase deployments,
whether they be more sections under the main website or they consist
of more client sites that share functionality and, in some cases,
common code. It sounds like your approach and mine are fairly in line.
I'd love to chat with you in the future.

Most of the existing frameworks I've found approach the problem from
the angle of modifying the markup to use predefined CSS classes. I'm
actually looking at something more like OOCSS and some aspects of
Scaffold to reduce the need to change component markup, but to still
allow many variations in look n' feel. Extensibility is also key.


-RYAN JOY
http://twitter.com/atxryan
512.552.2687 mobile

[Pat Ramsey]

Dammit,

I'll have to miss this, too. Got a house-o-plague to deal with. Teenagers - walking bacterial farms.

Cheers!

Pat

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 11:30 AM, Ryan Joy <atx...@gmail.com> wrote:

Keith: I'm pretty much always up for tech talk, listening to how
others are solving problems, and, of course, beers.

This is an issue any organization faces as they increase deployments,
whether they be more sections under the main website or they consist
of more client sites that share functionality and, in some cases,
common code. It sounds like your approach and mine are fairly in line.
I'd love to chat with you in the future.

Most of the existing frameworks I've found approach the problem from
the angle of modifying the markup to use predefined CSS classes. I'm
actually looking at something more like OOCSS and some aspects of
Scaffold to reduce the need to change component markup, but to still
allow many variations in look n' feel. Extensibility is also key.


-RYAN JOY
  http://twitter.com/atxryan
  512.552.2687 mobile

--
Pat Ramsey                                          
Web Design and Accessibility Specialist
ramse...@gmail.com

Code that works… beautifully
http://slash25.com
(347) 542-7252

[Buddy]

Anyway to record the conversation on your phone and post it as audio
somewhere? Would be great to listen in on as I can't make it either.

Buddy

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[Ryan Joy]

The audio would be terrible from inside the beer garden and we're very
likely going to stray back and forth from the topic of discussion.
Such is the nature of informals.

I'll definitely post anything that comes out of this.

Also, anyone should feel free to organize informal meetups anytime you
might have time or have an interesting problem to discuss. Just send a
note to the group gauging interest in the topic/time/location. Even
two Refreshers make it an informal. I try to come to these types of
discussions whenever possible as it's the best way to get outside of
the box that we all normally work in and see how our peers are doing it.

-RYAN JOY
http://twitter.com/atxryan
512.552.2687 mobile

> Job-related postings should follow http://tr.im/

[Alex S. Jones]

I agree 100% with Ryan - everyone should feel free to set up quick informal meetups with this group, it's an amazing way to work through a problem or meet others interested in a topic.

Keith, Pat and Buddy, sorry that you won't be able to join us. Between those of us who do make it, we should be able to provide a good summary and if this topic is an interesting one for the group, perhaps we'll set it up as a topic at a future monthly meeting.

Cheers,

Alex Jones
www.SilverSpider.com
www.twitter.com/BaldMan
www.RefreshAustin.org

[Phil Knoll]

the Adobe Flash meetup's held there tonight, also. I'll at least see
y'all ^o^

> > Job-related postings should followhttp://tr.im/refreshaustinjobspolicy

[Keith Aric Hall]

No pressure, but...how did it go? Anyone have anything worth sharing as a result of last nights gathering?

kah

[Phil Knoll]

Alex told me about CSScaffold, which I'm definitely checking out.

On Nov 19, 9:44 am, Keith Aric Hall <khall...@gmail.com> wrote:
> No pressure, but...how did it go? Anyone have anything worth sharing as a
> result of last nights gathering?
>
> kah
>

> > >> For more options, visit this group at
> >http://groups.google.com/group/Refresh-Austin
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> > > Our Web site:http://www.RefreshAustin.org/
>
> > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
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> > > [ Posting ]
> > > To post to this group, send email to Refresh...@googlegroups.com

> > > Job-related postings should followhttp://tr.im/refreshaustinjobspolicy

> > > We do not accept job posts from recruiters.
>
> > > [ Unsubscribe ]
> > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> > Refresh-Austi...@googlegroups.com
>
> > > [ More Info ]
> > > For more options, visit this group at
> >http://groups.google.com/group/Refresh-Austin
>
> > --
> > Our Web site:http://www.RefreshAustin.org/
>
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