The forgotten part of Tiddlywiki

[Mohammad]

The CSS is a forgotten part of Tiddlywiki!

All widgets and many wikitext focus on actions, little efforts have been done on the CSS side!

Why?

[PMario]

hi,

You need to  be more specific. In TW CSS can be defined using tiddlers. So there are the exact same possibilities as for any other element.

-m

[Mohammad]

That's true! But the focus is on actions not on CSS.

I mean it is not treated equally in development, documentation and other areas

-Mohammad

[PMario]

On Thursday, October 31, 2019 at 9:13:08 AM UTC+1, Mohammad wrote:

That's true! But the focus is on actions not on CSS.

I mean it is not treated equally in development, documentation and other areas

If you need a reference documentation about the web go to Mozilla Development Network (mdn)

Or more specifically:

 - Web Technology

 - Learn web development

 - FF Developer Tools

If you do a google search you can use the search term: "mdn css background"  (without the quotes) and the first link will probably be what you need. CSS overview is at: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS

I personally do use "mdn" .. prefix all the time, because I'm not interested in other stuff, that is outdated or wrong.

If you need to know, if a feature is browser specific, and you should or should _not_ use it, you can use caniuse.com and ask it. ... BTW caniuse and MDN share database content, to create their compatibility information.

If you want to get a summary, about the web, once per week I suggest to subscribe to:

 - https://frontendfoc.us/ 

and / or

 - https://javascriptweekly.com/ (developer centric)

You will get (a few) duplicated links, if you subscribe to both.

I think, there is no need to create CSS specific documentation in TW. The resources I did list, are always up to date and that's really important.

have fun!

mario

[HansWobbe]

@ Mohammad:

In my experience,

* "actions" get attention from Coders and Progammers that strive to create procedures that "do" things.

* "C(ascading)s(tyle)S(heets)" get attention from Artists and Designers that strive to craft attractive objects.

Architects, like Frank Lloyd Wright who I believe coined "Form follows Function" try to optimize these two design elements, but start with functional (Actions) and then progress to appeal (Style).

This communities current participants seem to be more focused on Function than Style, perhaps because there is a need to personalize a "non-linear notebook" in order to first make it particularly functional.  Perhaps an effective way to alter this would be be to try to attract more artists into the community.  That in itself could be an interesting experiment.

Regards,

Hans

[@TiddlyTweeter]

"The forgotten part of Tiddlywiki"

I totally agree that CSS in TW is ...

 - under-used, 

 - under-documented, and 

 - a "poor relative" :-).

Regarding PMario's comments--which are very much based on a view from an informed developer--something he misses is the BRIDGE between CSS as is in general  and CSS as it is in TW specifically, which does have some unique features (like possible dynamic allocatiion of values).

From my point of view as a person interested in "look" (pace Hans Wobbe) a PROBLEM is getting an overview of the CSS structure of TW to start from.

Whilst some programmers may point out you can use browser "inspection" tools to examine the CSS--quite true--I believe a documented (visual) overview of the basic nested structure would be very helpful. Probing "inspect" is the "long road home" and no way definitive on final cascades.

Just thoughts

Josiah

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Mohammad

One really positive point I want to underline is that TW's CSS logic is extremely elegant for the basics. 

That is largely an entailment of the architecture of Tiddlers. 

I'd say that the rigorous nesting of elements below the level of the Tiddler content is quite remarkable for its consistency. Its unusual to be so consistent on a website.

But its just not so well documented.

My thoughts

TT

On Thursday, 31 October 2019 06:53:07 UTC+1, Mohammad wrote:

[Mark S.]

It's not forgotten. It's just rather deliberately ignored. I'm a pragmatist. If something works, 99% of the time, that's good enough.

CSS is such a time suck. You can spend hours trying to get a field to expand to fill this box, but not overflow into that box. And

the inspector will cheerfully tell you that your carefully crafted selector is being overridden, but NOT tell you what is overriding

it or why.

There needs to be better tools for CSS application. In word processing, we stopped having to manually insert formatting

codes decades ago. But in CSS all that hassle is alive and well.

[Mohammad]

Thank you for all your comments and idea!

I think css in TW needs to get more attention! As stated above the main TW css framework is under-documented and hacking it not an easy task specially by intermediate users.

CSS is the language for describing the presentation and I think having a simple to understand and easy to use css framework lets users to create good looking stuffs using the wonderful TW.

off-topic

https://css-tricks.com/css-is-like/

--Mohammad

[TonyM]

Mohammad,

I agree we could make more use of CSS, and better documentation is important but as TT said the most critical issue is its relationship to Tiddlywiki. For example the classes in use and the best way to change them, where the elements are and what their names are. Since Tiddlywiki is a single page application we tend to stay in this single page rather than move from one page to the next like a classic website, which can use sophisticated and different CSS in each page. This means much css can apply in places you do not want it too, so a standard to allow css to be targeted to tiddlywiki elements.

If the above can be done effectively and document any exceptions and workarounds when they deviate from standard CSS practices we will not need to import all the documentation about css but reference publicly available css documentation.

I am a big fan of maximising the use of standards and documenting essential differences only. Leaving the community to share tips and tricks.

Regards

Tony