Re: practicality of user styleshseets

Regarding CSS compaction - surely this is just a tools issue? Valid CSS is
fairly easy to reformat, after all.

As to use of ID's - this has been encouraged for performance reasons.

-- James

On 14 October 2010 13:34, Felix Miata <mrmazda@earthlink.net> wrote:

> The user theoretically has ultimate control by applying his own stylesheet.
> I
> was recently reminded by
>
> http://onwebdev.blogspot.com/2010/10/css-writing-efficient-user-style-sheets.html#comment-form
> what a difficult task it can be for even a knowledgeable user to
> effectively
> exert that control. I suggest that certain things to discourage authors
> from
> employing troublesome techniques be incorporated into the CSS3
> documentation,
> without here suggesting any methodology.
>
> Problem 1-CSS file compaction:
> This is the stripping of all forms of unnecessary whitespace, including
> newlines, from CSS files in order to minimize server load and maximize
> download speed. The use of this technique seems to be rapidly spreading.
>
> It causes tools like Mozilla's Dom Inspector to show every rule on one
> line,
> a major impediment for any user attempting to isolate an offending rule
> that
> needs a compensating !important override. Even when viewed in an editor or
> viewer that wraps the long line, the lack of whitespace makes navigating
> and
> understanding the rulesets difficult.
>
> It would be nice to see an average or more than a dozen or so "}"
> characters
> per newline character in any CSS source somehow become invalid.
>
> Problem 2-ID and class proliferation:
> This should be self-explanatory. Authors don't seem to understand how to
> let
> inheritance do its job, preferring to apply at least one class and/or ID
> for
> virtually every element type and/or context.
>
> The more classes and IDs authors use, the greater the difficulty isolating
> those that actually cause offense to the user, and the greater the time
> required to build compensating overrides. At the same time, generic user
> styles are all but useless.
>
> One solution might be to increase priority of instances of !important among
> user styles so that each and every use of it takes precedence if in any way
> applicable no matter how high the specificity is in author styles. I can't
> think of any other way to deal with this other than user agents providing
> options to completely disregard classes without disregarding CSS entirely.
>
> More problems to be described as time permits (unless someone beats me to
> them all).  ;-)
> --
> "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
> words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)
>
>  Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409
>
> Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/
>
>