CSS: file or backend?

[jean-marie]

Hi,

I personally favorize working directly within the CSS file over using the backend style sheet functionality. Are there beyond this technical reasons why I should prefer the latter?

Thanks in advance,

Jean-Marie.

[qrczak]

I personally favorize working directly within the CSS file over using the backend style sheet functionality. Are there beyond this technical reasons why I should prefer the latter?

You don't have to working with backend style sheet editor. Just add in HEAD section of your template link to your css file and work directly on it, if you like. I'm working this way.

[markhurd]

I work the same way as qrczak. I prefer to manage the files directly on the FTP server and keep them under version control. They're linked to explicitly in my templates and I don't use the $this->stylesheets call.

Editing CSS in the back-end is probably more convenient for non-developer users. I view it as a lot of additional overhead, then again I'm comfortable editing by hand and probably not the target audience for this feature.

[Ben]

For hand-coding css, you all may be interested in the CSS editor extension. It allows you to freely edit the css file or use the built-in editor. Another interesting extension is styleVis, which lets you see the css styles applied to the selector in the backend.

[qrczak]

I work the same way as qrczak. I prefer to manage the files directly on the FTP server and keep them under version control.

Mark, what version control system you use?

[markhurd]

Depends on the project! I'm most comfortable with Subversion, but on some projects the developers prefer Git. As a User Experience guy (read: not much of a developer) Git kind of confuses me. Especially if I work on multiple machines I have to commit *and* push my revisions which I think kind of defeats the purpose?

For very minor stuff I will actually use Dropbox! This is a killer app if you haven't used it before. I don't know how I ever managed without it - total lifesaver. Even if you don't use the revision history I still consider it a must-have!

[jean-marie]

Hi guys,

thanks very much for the input; then I go on like you do, with my own CSS files.

@Mark, thanks for the tip for DropBox, looks like it will simplify a lot of things! :-)

Then, @Mark again, question with the source control: do you have a repository on your server, or do you just upload 'snapshots' of the current version? I mean: are you managing versions locally, and uploading the current state, or are the versions managed on your server? Would you tell me more about how you do this?

Jean-Marie.

[qrczak]

For very minor stuff I will actually use Dropbox! This is a killer app if you haven't used it before. I don't know how I ever managed without it - total lifesaver. Even if you don't use the revision history I still consider it a must-have!

I've never thought about Dropbox like about control version system. But you right, it works! I just check it on my Dropbox files :-) and there is (after right click) "View previous versions..." Great!

[markhurd]

Jean-Marie,

When I start a new project (on my local machine), I will import the project into my Subversion repository and then check it out from there as a "working copy." SVN will let you make any changes you want to files in your working copy, but that's the only place they exist until you commit your changes back to the repository. This allows multiple people to work on the same files at the same time; you will see an occasional conflict - which SVN helps resolve - but they aren't too common.

The repository itself is what keeps version history of each individual file. If I am working on a template and I completely break it and not sure how to fix it, I can just re-check any previous version out of the repository. Since every file is managed individually, there's really no "snapshot." I could grab a stylesheet from 3 weeks ago, a template from yesterday, and a brand new file created by someone else this morning and use them all locally. This is done independently of what other people are working on.

I hope that's a decent enough explanation, the concepts of version control are a bit hard to summarize. Here's the best Subversion resource I know of if you feel like reading more. http://svnbook.red-bean.com/