CSS Resets

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cmb
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CSS Resets

Post by cmb » Sat Aug 02, 2014 9:41 pm

Hello Community,

due to a recent support request I feel compelled to suggest that distributed templates should never use the following rule:

Code: Select all

* {padding: 0; margin: 0;}
Even if you take great care to set all appropriate margins and paddings later with more individual rules, you might forget one or two that could be important[1]. And even if you don't forget a single rule, there are still problems with some HTML attributes, which are mostly deprecated but might still be used and usually will work fine. An example is the table cellpadding attribute, which can still be set via TinyMCE dialogs -- this simply is ineffective when the rule above is used.

Instead of resetting all element's margins and paddings, just set those that you like to control, and leave the rest alone.

[1] In many (or all?) rather expensive templates of a certain template designer there is this global reset, but there are missing the margins/paddings for <dd>, for instance.

Christoph
Christoph M. Becker – Plugins for CMSimple_XH

svasti
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Joined: Wed Dec 17, 2008 5:08 pm

Re: CSS Resets

Post by svasti » Sat Aug 02, 2014 11:23 pm

We may need an incentive for template designers to to follow some guidelines.
What about some "XH recommended" badge?

Template designers of course try to make nice looking templates but unfortunately sometimes the code behind isn't that good.
The recommendation badge should not be given for looks but for good coding. A template designer could propose a template to be judged and some good coders should have a look at it and give their balanced opinion. The judges shouldn't be allowed to judge their own templates.

Just went through our bundled templates: 2 of them start with this unwanted code, probably because this reset is often recommended in online css tutorials.
We might consider to deliver XH with one simple template only, this will also make the download smaller in comparision to other CMSes.

cmb
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Re: CSS Resets

Post by cmb » Sat Aug 02, 2014 11:51 pm

svasti wrote:The recommendation badge should not be given for looks but for good coding. A template designer could propose a template to be judged and some good coders should have a look at it and give their balanced opinion. The judges shouldn't be allowed to judge their own templates.
Well, that might be a matter of available time--which seems to be missing. :(
svasti wrote:We might consider to deliver XH with one simple template only, this will also make the download smaller in comparision to other CMSes.
I have to admit that the templates we bundle since XH 1.5.8 considerably increase the download size. However, some plugins do so as well. We may consider offering some kind of packager, where the user can choose what he wants in the download. Of course that is not possible via SourceForge, but we could place a link to a customized downloads there, and offer some kind of default download on SF.
Christoph M. Becker – Plugins for CMSimple_XH

svasti
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Re: CSS Resets

Post by svasti » Sun Aug 03, 2014 9:38 am

cmb wrote:We may consider offering some kind of packager, where the user can choose what he wants in the download.
wouldn't like to do this next to source forge...
why not rather give the URLs of template designers. Harteg provided (I dimly remember) 2 ugly templates, do we need 7?
However I wouldn't take them away without providing a link to template designers, plugins an service providers on cmsimple-xh.org (otherwise they may get mad at me :o )

Considering bundled templates and our limited man power: better keep things as simple as possible but not simpler. The bundled plugins are quite essential, but the templates are not.

cmb
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Re: CSS Resets

Post by cmb » Mon Aug 04, 2014 10:51 am

svasti wrote:Harteg provided (I dimly remember) 2 ugly templates, do we need 7?
Well, IMHO none of the 7 templates is ugly. :)

Anyway, we had a long discussion regarding replacing the XH 1.5 templates, and finally a voting (1:0:0, a rather bare majority, though). If we are going to change our descision, we should (a) have a new vote, and (b) have a prominent list of template providers on cmsimple-xh.org (the list in the XH wiki is hard to find, and is not really useful). And we may consider to offer the templates that we'll remove (if we'll remove any) as a separate download package on sourceforge.
Christoph M. Becker – Plugins for CMSimple_XH

cmb
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Re: CSS Resets

Post by cmb » Sun Apr 02, 2017 10:24 pm

After a long time, this finally needs a decision. With regard to the new page splitting, it's best to ship templates which cater to it (potentially different styles for <h1>-<h3> etc.) which none of the current templates does. It wouldn't be hard to adapt them, but hey, after 3 and a half men year, why not simply bundle completely new templates? WordPress ships a new template each year!

As frase, lck and richukunst have been the first to create "split" templates, they seem to be the right guys for 1.7's templates. lck_overlay_01 and richu171-split are readily available, and both designers already gave explicit permission to bundle these templates. frase assured to overhaul fhs-simple-split, so we'd have our third template.
Christoph M. Becker – Plugins for CMSimple_XH

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