Drupal 8 Themes with

SASS and SMACSS

(and kittens)

Who am I?

Liisa, The CSS Nazi

Senior Software Developer, Super-

hyper Drupal Girl @Tieto

d.org: lduerig

Twitter: @LisKit7

About Tieto

Tieto is the largest Nordic IT services provider, offering full

life-cycle services, mainly focusing in:

● Financial services

● Manufacturing, Retail and Logistics

● Public, Healthcare and Welfare

● Telecom, Media and Energy

Not part of the scope of this presentation, but

ask if you want to know more. May be good for

a later presentation.

=

Old school.

● media queries /

breakpoints

● sprites

● fixed gutter width

● fixed sprite width

Unmaintainable, manual

labour and prone to

inconsistencies.

SASS - CSS with Superpowers

$variable + @mixin + @extend ==

less copy/paste ==

consistant ==

AWESOME!

(Be careful with @extends.

And nesting fever. (Later))

What about Drupal?

● Can’t modules handle this?o Yes, but if you know enough code to be writing

SCSS, you probably shouldn’t need a module for it.

● How does this work with Drupal dev?o Perfectly. Separately.

Setup

● Ruby

● Sass

● Compass

● Breakpoint

● Bundler, for version management

Ruby

config.rb

● Environment (minification)

● Firesass

● Resources

● Compass plugins

● Import external stuff

● SASS options

Bundler Gemfile

Useful if you are working on a pre-existing

setup, and need specific versions of things.

Variables? Awesome!

Use for:

● breakpoints

● measurements

● font-sizes

● font-families

● … anything that you use often or should have a default.

Benefits:

● Consistent CSS.

● Easy to make site-wide changes.

● No need to sift through code if a breakpoint or font-size

should be changed.

● No need to remember what these default values are.

Best practices

● Keep most site-wide variables in a partial _variables.scss, within your

SMACSS “base” directory.

● Use these variables in other partials, don’t mix up static styles with

variables!

o Every time I find font-size: 10px an SCSS partial, God kills a kitten and

I have nightmares.

● Vertical measurement variables and font-sizes should be ems and

calculated with Compass vertical-rhythm library.

● Horizontal measurement variables can be set however you want, perhaps

using multiples of a $base-unit-pixels. Be consistent.

$ compass watch….

SASS @mixins

Use mixins for bits of code

that you use frequently in

your SCSS.

This little mixin makes it very

easy to whip up media

queries on-the-fly.

And then the mixin grew up and realized life

wasn’t

so

simple.

Don’t re-invent the wheel.

SASS libraries have a lot of awesome functions

and mixins to do this stuff for you.

Breakpoint

http://breakpoint-sass.com

Compiles

to

Breakpoint

http://breakpoint-sass.com

Really Simple, Organized,

Media Queries with Sass

How about that obnoxious

sprite?

Compass - Sprites

Files:images/my-icons/new.png

images/my-icons/edit.png

images/my-icons/save.png

images/my-icons/delete.png

SCSS:@import "compass/utilities/sprites";

@import "my-icons/*.png";

@include all-my-icons-sprites;

Generated CSS:.my-icons-sprite,

.my-icons-delete,

.my-icons-edit,

.my-icons-new,

.my-icons-save { background: url('/images/my-icons-

s34fe0604ab.png') no-repeat; }

.my-icons-delete { background-position: 0 0; }

.my-icons-edit { background-position: 0 -32px; }

.my-icons-new { background-position: 0 -64px; }

.my-icons-save { background-position: 0 -96px; }

Compass - Sprites

● Configuration options per sprite or sprite-map

● Magic selectors

● Magic imports

● Sprite layouts

● Sass functions

tutorial: http://compass-style.org/help/tutorials/spriting/

Compass - SpritesWe need:

● toggle menu icon for mobile

● fixed width and height

● list-items in the menu should

be of equal height

● More control, no extra classes

SCSS Generated CSS

Compass - Sprites

That’s extra lines of code, what’s the point?● I am not wasting my time fiddling around with a sprite.

● I don’t care how many pixels a particular image is offset

in the sprite.

● I don’t care what size the image is.

● My designers don’t have to care about creating sprites

or listen to me whine, either.

What else can we do with

Compass?

Compass - CSS3

Which of these would you rather write?

HINT!

Compass - Links

● Hover Link – Underline a link when you hover over it.

● Link Colors – Easy assignment of colors to link states.

● Unstyled Link – Make a link appear like regular text.

Compass - Lists

● Bullets – Mixins for managing list bullets.

● Horizontal List – Float a list so it appears horizontally.

● Inline-Block List – set list-elements to inline-block so they appear

horizontally while retaining their structure.

● Inline List – Style a list as inline text.

Compass - Text

● Ellipsis – Text truncation with ellipsis.

● Force Wrap – Wrap URLs and long lines of text.

● No Wrap – Remembering whether or not there's a hyphen in white-

space is too hard.

● Text Replacement – Replace text with images.

Compass - Typography

Vertical RhythmA massive pile of variables, constants, functions and mixins

to help create and manage vertical rhythm on your site.

This stuff is AWESOME, check it out.

Compass also has it’s own

layout import, and there are

many other Sass layout

libraries out there, Susy,

Bootstrap, Zen grids...

Compass can be

overkill

But usually is a timesaver.

● Calculates ems for you with Vertical Rhythm.

● Generates sprites and all kinds of sprite-related

goodies.

● Allows you to do all kinds of things that would normally

require many lines of CSS to be cross-browser

compatible.

● All kinds of fun stuff that is tedious to do by hand.

Nesting

is the best thing

ever, right?

.block {h2.title {color: MediumSeaGreen;

}}

Only logged in users

actually wanted to see

this colour and only in

the content region...

.logged-in {#content {.block {h2.title {color: MediumSeaGreen;

}}

}}

Wait, the

sidebar should

be different!

.logged-in {#content {.block {h2.title {color: MediumSeaGreen;

}}.sidebar-second {.block {h2.title {color: LightGoldenRodYellow;

}}

}}

}

Communications

department has a

special announcement,

they want a special

block style to highlight

it.

.logged-in {#content {.block {h2.title {color: MediumSeaGreen;

}}.sidebar-second {.block {h2.title {color: LightGoldenRodYellow;

}&#my-special-block {h2.title {color: YouGottaBeKiddingMe;

}}

}}

}}

Poor kitty. :’(.logged-in {#content {.block h2.title {color: MediumSeaGreen;

}.sidebar-second {.block {h2.title {color: LightGoldenRodYellow;

}&#my-special-block {h2.title {color: YouGottaBeKiddingMe;

}}}}}} /* This is called saving space */

.logged-in #content .block h2.title { color: MediumSeaGreen; }

.logged-in #content .sidebar-second .block h2.title { color: LightGoldenRodYellow; }

.logged-in #content .sidebar-second .block#my-special-block h2.title { color: YouGottaBeKiddingMe; }

Override this, I dare you.

.node-type-key-topics #main #content .panel-pane.pane-key-topics-portfolio-panel-pane-2 .view-key-topics-portfolio > .view-content li.views-row > div {

}

Real life example. Love the ability to nest selectors in SASS/LESS, but remember that nesting isn’t

always necessary. If you don’t need to nest to achieve a certain level of specificity, don’t do it.

Rule of thumb: Nest no more than 3-4 levels deep!

http://www.creativebloq.com/css3/avoid-css-mistakes-10135080 - For all the insights on everything

everyone is doing wrong.

padding: 0;padding: 0 $base_unit !important;

There, I did it. Neener, neener.

Other Pitfalls

● !important

● Over-specificity

● #id selectors - Not cool! Practically

impossible to override and slower

performance.

Please keep your module CSS non-

specific. Overspecify, and I would rather

write my own module than use yours.

SMACSS

● Scalable and

● Modular

● Architecture for

● Cascading

● Style

● Sheets

https://smacss.com/

Why?

● Organization

● Working with individual, repeatable

components, rather than whole-page

mentality

● Less nesting

● Fewer unnecessary overrides

● BEM - Easier to tell what a component is doing from

name alone

● Styleguide-driven development

Sass structure

● Base - Resets, defaults, variables, mixins, no classes or ids!

● Layout - Set it and forget it. No styles!

● Module (Component) - Individual and repeatable separate pieces of your

site (e.g. .button)

o Block

o Element

o Modifier

● State - hover and other contextual issues

● Theme (Skin) - Things specific to your theme, independant of

components, etc.

BEM Naming

Conventions

.cat { // Block: A cat. }

.cat__fur { // Element: Fur is an element “in” the cat. }

.cat__box { // Element: Box is a wrapper around the cat. }

.cat--fetish { // Modifier: Fetish is a specific cat. }

.cat--fetish.is-purring { // State: Fetish the cat is purring. }

.living-room .cat { // Theme: A cat in the living room. }

Styleguide driven development

New to front-end development?

“Here’s a secret: No one

else really knows what

they’re doing either.”

Nicholas Gallagher, 2013

(stolen from John Albin)

Further reading/watching/tools

● http://styleguides.io/

● Styleguide driven

development -

https://www.youtube.com/wat

ch?v=0ulC_UiObS0

● http://bourbon.io