Problem/Motivation

We already have agreed CSS coding standards. There is a lot of change planned to the CSS in 8.0.x. We are still rewriting the CSS in Bartik, Seven, and in modules. We are also planning to split the module CSS between Stark and Classy.

#2405553: Ensure code is inline with the current standards
#1342054: [META] Clean up templates and CSS
#1995272: [Meta] Refactor module CSS files inline with our CSS standards

Ever since the mobile initiative fizzled out, we haven't had an active CSS maintainer, a lot of issues that were assigned to JohnAlbin never got a response and some issues involving CSS have suffered from a lack of authority over how to interpret our new CSS standards, when they should be tweaked and if when we should add to them.

Proposed resolution

Add an active maintainer, optionally removing JohnAlbin to reflect reality.

CommentFileSizeAuthor
#8 add_an_active-2417089-8.patch374 bytesdavidhernandez

Comments

lewisnyman’s picture

Issue tags: +frontend, +CSS

It's hard to word these issues not to sound too negative. I'm really grateful for all John has done to move CSS forward in Drupal 8, I just think are struggling going forward without an active maintainer. I'd rather maintainers.txt reflected reality.

lewisnyman’s picture

Issue summary: View changes
lewisnyman’s picture

Issue summary: View changes
manjit.singh’s picture

@lewisnyman May I request you to be a maintainer of this ? :)

johnalbin’s picture

Ironically, this is one of the first Drupal issues I've replied to in a while. :-)

CSS is still a huge focus for me, but I've realized that it is critical to have an auto-generated style guide available when a developer is adding new UI elements to Drupal. It is frustrating and immensely difficult to figure out "can I reuse an existing style for this new thing" when your workflow is:

* click around a Drupal site until you see something that looks good and/or
* browse the ~40 CSS files to look for promising _code_ and/or
* ask a Drupal maintainer for advice on how to do it

Ugh. I don't scale. Nor are the other 2 ways easy for the average CSS expert (let alone the average backend dev.)

It is much easier to have a single always up-to-date style guide that shows you the exact CSS classes and aporoxiatemate HTML that any dev needs to reuse an existing design element. In a nutshell, that is what "style guide driven development" is.

To the end, I looked around extensively and started using the open spec, KSS, ( https://github.com/kneath/kss/blob/master/SPEC.md ) to document CSS so it can be parsed to auto-generate a style guide.

And I've spent almost all of my OSS contribution time on getting the kss-node software from "works just good enough" to "just works". I'm now the primary contributor to that software. (Switching from Drupal to kss-node has been a great break to prevent 100% burn out btw.) kss-node 2.0.0 was released yesterday. https://github.com/kss-node/kss-node

I have been amazed at how far Drupal's CSS has come in the past year in my absence. I don't know who is responsible or I would call them out by name. But let me same again: it is amazing! Good job, everyone.

What Lewis says is 100% accurate. Now that kss-node 2 is out, I'm going to work on getting KSS docs into Drupal core. But it would be irresponsible of me to not agree with Lewis about the maintainers.txt; we obviously need some one else listed there. I would ask that it be an _additional_ person, but given my absence, I defer that decision to the consensus.

DickJohnson’s picture

@LewisNyman++

But do you have time to handle this?

davidhernandez’s picture

StatusFileSize
new374 bytes

Just talked with John about this on IRC. I don't think he's going away (and we don't want him to!!) but we know it is important to always have at least one person actively involved. And our CSS standards should be important enough to us that we make sure they are being tended to.

I'm fine with leaving John and adding Lewis. Lewis has already proven himself as a core maintainer, and I'm sure they can work well together.

davidhernandez’s picture

Status: Active » Needs review
lewisnyman’s picture

@davidhernandez Thanks for talking the John! I'm happy taking on this role, because it doesn't feel like a big change from what I'm doing now. It's a real shame there aren't many contributors who are still active in the frontend issue queue who were heavily involved in #1921610: [Meta] Architect our CSS and that there aren't more candidates for this role. I would say that idebr has been showing some great leadership in CSS issues but whether he feels experienced enough to take on a maintainer role is something else.

lewisnyman’s picture

I don't think we need to remove John, as long as we don't rely on John being around to make decisions on CSS.

rachel_norfolk’s picture

If I had a general Drupal css query, LewisNyman would be the person I would naturally think to ask about it, so the idea of at least adding him as a maintainer of Drupal css seems obvious.

mortendk’s picture

no protest from me & nice to see that john have gotten the kss stuff to work :)

Were going into a periode now where its gonna be crucial to have an maintainer that can help push the hard decisions, so i for one i fully support this.

idebr’s picture

LewisNyman has shown to be a very capable, friendly and consistent contributor over the last few years, so you have my vote as a css maintainer. I would be happy to contribute to whatever you come up with :)

mortendk’s picture

Status: Needs review » Reviewed & tested by the community

*Draws the sword* Lewis kneal and accept the world of css pain on your shoulders.

star-szr’s picture

+1!

wim leers’s picture

+1!

cosmicdreams’s picture

I'm looking forward to helping Lewis and John where I can. Happy to see this continue to be an important issue.

emma.maria’s picture

Lewis is dedicated to fixing all CSS in Drupal 8. As well as improving Seven, he is helping all themes and improving all of the Core CSS too. He has given Bartik a LOT of great guidance and support recently with CSS standards, which I hugely appreciate! lewisnyman is an obvious choice from my point of view.

I look forward to seeing what John and Lewis can achieve together, exciting times :)

+1!

ckrina’s picture

+1!

alexpott’s picture

Status: Reviewed & tested by the community » Fixed

+1 to having active maintainers and certianly @LewisNyman is all over Drupal 8's CSS so this makes sense. Committed 2705097 and pushed to 8.0.x. Thanks!

  • alexpott committed 2705097 on 8.0.x
    Issue #2417089 by davidhernandez: Add an active maintainer for CSS
    
skippednote’s picture

Well deserved Lewis.
Keep pushing the Drupal front-end boundaries.

corbacho’s picture

:)

lewisnyman’s picture

Thank you for your kind comments. Where to start!? I just checked. There are 13,836 lines of CSS in core.

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed - issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.