Comments on: 5 most important things I learned in 5 years of front-end development

By: Best buy 13

Best buy 13 — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 13:28:31 +0000

Oh! Thanks for your post.

By: chai

chai — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 05:37:19 +0000

thank good code.

By: Brett Widmann

Brett Widmann — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 22:18:56 +0000

Thanks for the tips. It’s nice to hear what other people have learned from their positions.

By: ralf57

ralf57 — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:02:24 +0000

CSS indenting is a non-existing issue, just use a code browser within your editor

By: Florent V.

Florent V. — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:46:02 +0000

I would not add code formatting preferences to an advice article. There are quite a few different code formatting styles out there for CSS, each used by a lot of skilled front-end developers who could swear it’s the best thing since sliced bread. You know what? No coding style is.

My coding style for CSS involves two levels of comments that work like titles (/* — COMMENT — */ and /* Comment */), one declaration per line with one indent, a hierarchical order of declaration by property (display, positioning, text, background), no hierarchical indentation. Is that better than yours? Certainly not. Yet my (small) company is going to standardize its coding style around that one because we need a common standard, my own is decent and i’m the CSS expert.

The coding style is not important. What’s good (in my opinion) is to have one and stick to it. So, when coding Python, we try to follow PEP8. It might not suit or taste all the time (i prefer tab characters over the recommended 4-space-indents, the line length restriction is a bit too strict…), but sticking to it most of the time helps everyone understand coworkers’ code.

I’d say all your other pieces of advice are solid, but coding standards are mostly arbitrary.

By: emptywalls

emptywalls — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 23:31:19 +0000

I’ll have to try the CSS indent trick, that looks great. You’ll have to twist my arm to get me to try the ‘minimize your CSS’ trick, but it makes sense.

By: links for 2009-08-20 | sashidhar.com

links for 2009-08-20 | sashidhar.com — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:22:32 +0000

[...] 5 most important things I learned in 5 years of front-end development « Position Absolute (tags: css ui UX) [...]

By: Cedric Dugas

Cedric Dugas — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:29:20 +0000

Interesting, I will have a look at Snook article

By: Markive

Markive — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:18:22 +0000

I agree with Kelly – Jonathon Snook recommended always coding CSS on one line so that you can quickly scan down the document for the required style. I heavily indent related styles aswell which helps and I make everyone I work with do the same and they soon see the benefits!

Love the site!

Cheers,
M

By: Kelly

Kelly — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 03:56:39 +0000

I disagree about having your css indented. Properly formatted, the one-line method is far easier for me to read when scanning through copious amounts of code. It’s definitely a matter of preference though, as I know other developers who are like you and prefer it your way.

For the record, I too have been told the legibility of my code sets my work apart.

Great article though! I love your site and check it regularly =)