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Adrian Bece for PROTOTYP

Posted on • Edited on • Originally published at blog.prototyp.digital

Improve your CSS with these 5 principles

Writing CSS is really simple and straightforward, so why is there a need for principles and best-practices while writing CSS?

As the project scope increases and as the number of people working on the project increases, the problems become more and more apparent and can cause serious issues down the line. Fixing issues may become harder, duplicated code, complex override chains and use of !important, leftover / unused code (removed elements or features), code that is hard to read, etc.

Writing CSS at a professional level will make the CSS code more maintainable, extensible, understandable and cleaner. We're going to look at the five simple and very effective principles that will take your CSS to the next level.

Naming principle

"There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things." -- Phil Karlton

Properly naming and structuring your CSS selectors is the first step to making your CSS more readable, structured and cleaner. Establishing rules and constraints in your naming convention makes your code standardized, robust and easier to understand.

This is why concepts like BEM (Block-Element-Modifier), SMACSS (Scalable and Modular Architecture for CSS) and OOCSS (Object Oriented CSS) are popular among many frontend developers.

Low specificity principle

Overriding CSS properties is very useful, but things can go out of hand pretty quickly on more complex projects. Overriding chains can get really long and complex, you might be forced to use !important to solve the specificity issue and you could get really easily lost when debugging or adding new features.

/* Low-specificity selector */
.card {}

/* High-specificity selectors */
.card .title {}

.blog-list .card img {}

.blog-list .card.featured .title {}

#js-blog-list .blog-list .card img {}
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Browser and specificity

One of the benefits of following the low specificity principle is performance. Browsers parse the CSS from right to left.

Let's take a look at the following example:

.blog-list .card img {}
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Browsers parse the selector like this:

  1. Find all img elements on the page
  2. Keep selected elements that are the descendants of .card class
  3. Keep selected elements that are the descendant of .blog-list class

You can see how high-specificity selectors impact performance, especially when we need to globally select generic elements like div, img, li, etc.

Using the same level of specificity

By using low specificity CSS class selectors in combination with BEM or one of the other naming principles mentioned in the previous section, we can create a performant, flexible and understandable code.

Why use CSS classes? We want to keep the same level of specificity, stay flexible and be able to target multiple elements. Element selectors and id selectors do not offer the flexibility that we need.

Let's rewrite our previous example using BEM and keeping specificity low.

/* Low-specificity selector */
.card {}

/* Fixed high-specificity selectors */
.card__title {}

.blogList__image {}

.blogList__title--featured {}

.blogList__img--special {}
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You can see how these selectors are simple, understandable and can be easily overridden and extended if needed. And by keeping them low-level (a single class), we are guaranteed optimal performance and flexibility.

DRY Principle

DRY (Don't repeat yourself) principle can be also applied to CSS. Duplicated code in CSS can cause code bloat, unnecessary overrides, reduce maintainability, etc. This issue can be fixed by structuring the code appropriately and having high-quality documentation.

Storybook is a great free tool that enables you to create an overview of available frontend components and write high-quality documentation.

/* Without DRY Princple */
.warningStatus {
  padding: 0.5rem;
  font-weight: bold;
  color: #eba834;
}

.errorStatus {
  padding: 0.5rem;
  font-weight: bold;
  color: #eb3d34;
}

.form-errorStatus {
  padding: 0.5rem 0 0 0;
  font-weight: bold;
  color: #eb3d34;
}
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Let's refactor the code so it follows the DRY principle.

/* With DRY Principle */
.status {
  padding: 0.5rem;
  font-weight: bold;
}

.status--warning {
  color: #eba834;
}

.status--error {
  color: #eb3d34;
}

.form__status {
  padding: 0.5rem 0 0 0;
}
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Single responsibility principle

By using the single responsibility principle in our CSS, we can ensure that our CSS classes are easily extended and overriden. Let's take a look at the following example.

.button {
  padding: 1rem 2rem;
  font-size: 2rem;
  border-radius: 0.2rem;
  background-color: #eb4934;
  color: #fff;
  font-weight: bold;
}

.button--secondary {
  border-radius: 0;
  font-size: 1rem;
  background-color: #888;
}

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We can see that if we want to extend .button class with .button--secondary, we are doing lots of overrides to achieve what we need, when we only want to apply a different background color and keep the default styles.

The problem is that our .button class is having several roles:

  • Sets layout (padding)
  • Sets typography (font-size,font-weight)
  • Sets presentation (color,background-color, border-radius)

this makes our CSS classes very hard to extend and combine with other CSS classes. By keeping this in mind, let's use BEM and OOCSS to improve our CSS.

/* Shared styles */
.button {
  padding: 1rem 2rem;
  font-weight: bold;
  color: #fff;
}

/* Style extensions */
.button--radialBorder {
  border-radius: 0.2rem;
}

.button--large {
  font-size: 2rem;
}

.button--primary{
  background-color: #eb4934;
}

.button--secondary {
  background-color: #888;
}
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We have broken down our button styles into several classes that can be used to extend the base button class. We can optionally apply the modifiers and add new ones as the design changes or new elements are being added.

Open/Close principle

software entities (classes, modules, functions, etc.) should be open for extension, but closed for modification.

We've already used the open/close principle in the previous examples. All new features and options need to be added by extension. Let's take a look at this example.


.card {
  padding: 1rem;
}

.blog-list .card {
  padding: 0.5em 1rem;
}
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The .blog-list .card selector has few potential issues:

  • Some styles can be applied only if the .card element is a child of .blog-list element.
  • Styles are forcibly applied to the .card element if placed inside the .blog-list element, which can produce unexpected results and unecessary overrides.

Let's rewrite the previous example:

.card {
  padding: 1rem;
}

.blogList__card {
  padding: 0.5em 1rem;
}
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We've fixed the issue by having a single class selector. With this selector, we can avoid unexpected effects and there are no conditional nested styles.

Conclusion

We've seen how by applying these few simple principles we have significantly improved the way we write CSS:

  • Standardized naming and structure, and improved readability by using BEM, OCSS, etc.
  • Improved performance and structure by using low-specificity selectors.
  • Reduced code bloat and improved code quality with DRY principle
  • Flexibility and maintainability by using open/close principle
  • etc.

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Top comments (21)

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russellbishop profile image
Russell Bishop • Edited

Adrian I have another principle that conflicts with some of your own, but I feel would solve some of the problems you're sharing.

Don't Unset Yourself.

That is – do not contradict a previous style that you have applied.

Your example:

.card {
  padding: 1rem;
}

.blogList__card {
  padding: 0.5em 1rem;
}

Would be much better served as:

.card { … }
.card--default { padding: 1rem; }

.card--blog-list, // OR
.blog-list__card 
{ padding: 0.5em 1rem; }

This way you do not have to worry about the order of properties to ensure that your classes work as intended. You only ever add styles, instead of setting and then unsetting them.

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chrisachard profile image
Chris Achard

Nice overview - It's good to know the actual names of these tips (like "Low specificity"); that helps with remembering it :)

Also, didn't realize that browsers search for selectors from right to left! That's interesting... I wonder how much overhead it saves once you realize that - do you know of any studies / tests that show that?

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adrianbdesigns profile image
Adrian Bece

Thank you. Glad you found the article useful.

Regarding the performance studies, I am not aware of any, but if you come across any, please link them.

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texxs profile image
Texx Smith

"Writing CSS is really simple and straightforward" = BS.

CSS is getting better but it is still a mess. Brower compatibility probs, compiler-generated CSS, resets, browser pre-fixes, box type, and old legacy days from when they let print designer sit at the table to develop specs...

Oh ya and silly issues reading selector from right to left when we read it top to bottom and the browser typically reads everything else from start to finish . . . etc etc.

CSS is almost as much of a mess as JavaScript.

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adrianbdesigns profile image
Adrian Bece

This article deals with the basics of how we write CSS (selectors and properties concept) and how to write flexible and scalable CSS, not browser compatibility issues, CSS compilers, vendor prefixes, etc.

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texxs profile image
Texx Smith

I wasn't saying anything like that. I'm just saying that CSS is not simple and straightforward anymore. I still enjoyed your article though and look forward to seeing another.

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adrianbdesigns profile image
Adrian Bece

Thank you for clarifying and I'm glad you've enjoyed the article.

CSS indeed had a messy history and the syntax suffered for it, but it keeps improving year after year.

 
adrianbdesigns profile image
Adrian Bece

Thank you for the very detailed and insightful answer. I guessed as much regarding the performance and the worst-case scenario. In any case, I think that having a single selector is the best way to go in terms of performance, code readability and flexibility.

In any case, having several levels of CSS selectors brings up some other issues, as described in "Open/Closed principle".

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unodwicho profile image
UnoDwicho

I teach webdesign basics and this was incredibly helpful and gave me some ideas on how to approach things with my students. Specificity often is something that leave them scratching their head.
Thanks!

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adrianbdesigns profile image
Adrian Bece

Thank you, glad you found it helpful. I wish my teachers would show me these best practices from the start.

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

I use BEM at work but I prefer ECSS at home. ecss.io/

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adrianbdesigns profile image
Adrian Bece

Nice. Thank you for sharing. I might use it as well on my projects

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett 🌀

There is definitely some good takeaways, I highly recommend it.

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zenotds profile image
Zeno

Everytime i see BEM I can't stop thinking how ugly, inconvenient and repetitive it is.

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amlinarev profile image
Andrej Mlinarević

That is very true for BEM, but generally it's not a problem if you don't nest classes more than 2-3 levels.

I sometimes combine BEM with the "old ways" in order to not have deep nesting of BEM on complex elements. Works fine, still namespaced (but you need to have control of the whole project and be reasonable enough not to write a global ".specificelement" class.

.block__element--modifier .specificelement {}

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vkeknec profile image
v-keknec

Very helpful. Thanks!

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adrianbdesigns profile image
Adrian Bece

Thank you. Glad you've found it helpful.

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0ctavia profile image
Octa

Excellent article, thank you very much.

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adrianbdesigns profile image
Adrian Bece

Thank you

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manojkrajasekar profile image
Manoj Kumar Rajasekar

Great one ! Clean and simple explanation.

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adrianbdesigns profile image
Adrian Bece

Thank you