Considerations on building a frontend codebase

Every developer at one time stops looking for code from previous built websites and starts building his own standardized code to cut down on production time and repetative work. Call it a boiler plate, codebase, template, scaffolding, framework or whatever. The bottom line is that every developer needs one.

Problems with my current codebase

Well, I already have a codebase, but it has some problems. The important one is that it only covers the very basics. That’s because designs can be very diverse and as a developer I want to stay true to the design. So it’s hard to build a codebase with grids and blocks if all design differ from eachother.

Another problem major issue is something I have more control over: the codebase and the documentation is a bit scattered. The last problem I have is that I have no demo page of my standard CSS code, so there’s no easy way to check the template on browser compatibilities.

Now my jQuery plugin project has reached version 1.1, I had the time to do some thinking about a new codebase that would be solid, extendable, easy to deploy and would replace all other codebases and documentation.

Let me make it clear: this article is about my considerations about building a solid framework for myself. It may not apply to you and my ideas not unique either. It still may be helpful for you to get an idea of what sort of codebase you need.

Existing examples

The most important thing about a codebase is to decide how to set it up and how to store it. I like the way open source grids like Grid960 and YUI have organized their code into little reusable bits and have created a demo and test page for each and every component.

I must admit: I hardly ever used these grids. Most of those grids talk the language of the web developer, not of the designer. And the designers I know don’t have to limit themselves to a 24-column grid system. Not to mention the designers that are totally ignorant of such a system and whose task is to design a website and mail the Photoshop file to some other company that has to build it. Although I have my reservations towards grids, I like the way these codebases are organized. It can serve as a good Blueprint for my own codebase.

I also get my inspiration from Nicole Sullivan’s talk on Object Oriented CSS (OOCSS). OOCSS basically means that you build your components in such a way that they become extendable objects. Just like in real object oriented programming. Just have a look at her talk about OOCSS on Yahoo! Developer Network.

Prefix classes

By adding a (relatively) unique string before the name of the class you have created your own CSS namespace. It will minimize any interference of other CSS styling that is not part of your own code. Some real life examples can be found in the code that is generated by the CMS systems I have experience with: Sitefinity and Sitecore. The CMS Sitefinity for example prefixes all CSS classes with “sf_”.

Grids, blocks and text

All CSS code will be split into different categories that work relatively independently of each other. Until now I can come up with 3 of them.

Grids

Grids are the frameworks of placeholders in which we put our content. You know: header, visual, column1, column2, column3 and footer. There are lots of grid templates around like Grid960 and Blueprint. My view is that those templates only work if the designer agrees to work within the limits of that framework. My ambition is to write a framework that makes my work easier while still being flexible enough to keep the designers happy.

Blocks

There are as many block as the designer can come up with. I think it will be a real time saver to talk with the designer and write down all the types of blocks he thinks he’ll like to use often. Or even better: just open the last 20 or so web designs he/she made and destil the common blocks and its common features. like menus, news article lists, homepage spotlights, etc. Finally you create basic blocks of it in your template system.

Standarization is not always popular with designers but if it means that projects can be created cheaper there may eventually be budget left to build cool stuff. At least, I hope…

Text

Basic text styling is also a relatively independent component in CSS code. You always define a basic font color, family, size and line height that serves as a base styling for the whole websites. More specific text styling in blocks should be kept to a minimum and preferably relatively to the base text style. So if you have a base style of font: 1em/1.5em normal Arial, sans-serif, you ideally should style a header in a block like this: font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.2em;.

Although font-weight is not something you can set relative to a base style, it’s not likely that it will look ugly in combination with some design if you add font-weight styling to a block. Setting the font-family in the styling of blocks on the other hand will most likely interfere with design, since designs tend to depend heavily on a particular font.

Create base templates and extend themes

The code for each grid system and each block will be stored in a seperate base CSS file. Each grid or block can be extended with extra themes or styles. Each style extension will have its own CSS file and presumes that the base file is already loaded.

Optimizing CSS

Having all code seperated in small snippets is great for maintaining an overview. As long as you can see what a CSS file does by looking at its filename, its will be easy to add and extend styling to a website.

The template code is not optimized for speed, though. If we don’t do anything about the fragmentation, the server will have to load a bunch of little CSS files. It’s important to stress this: It’s not just the total filesize that matters, each http request costs time. Check out YSlow if you want to know more about this and if it affects your site.

YUI

That’s why all CSS in the website has to be exported, merged and its code minified to one single CSS file. Normally I use YUI compressor for it.

Less

But you can do more than just minification. Less is a system that extends the CSS syntax with stuff like variables, nested rules and mixins. Less was originally built in Ruby, but there’s also an ASP.NET port. I hope it will help me create very flexible grids.

By exporting CSS into optimized code, you can focus on making the most readable CSS source file because all comments and spaces in the code will be removed in the end. This is also what I do with JavaScript code and certainly will continue to do.