Kim - You hit the nail on the head with the manual duplication problems. That's my primary motivation for moving to a model that cuts RedDot out of the style sheet process as much as possible. Clearly I'm not the first to think of trying this and I'm glad to see the larger community has taken to it (or something similar) and had good results.
On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 9:24 PM, kimdezen <[email protected]> wrote: > We've had some very lengthy discussions about CSS/RedDot in the office > over the years (many developers have conflicting ideas about the best > way to handle CSS).. > > However - here is the general consensus: > > 1. When developing a new site, always keep stylesheets outside of > RedDot (create absolutely referenced links to the stylesheets). That > way whilst you are developing your templates/content classes, front- > end developers can continually keep make changes to the stylesheet to > fix an bugs/browser compatibility issues without having to touch the > CMS. This is particularly helpful if you are using a deployment server > - whenever changes are checked in to Source Control, they are > automatically deployed to the location/server where they are being > referenced. > > 2. Once your site has been developed and test and is ready to deploy, > either: > a) Convert the stylesheets into Content Classes so that all > styles are managed within the project > > OR > > b) Reference the stylesheets directly from the published > site > > > I would suggest using option A if you are unable to directly access > the live server (via FTP etc) due to security restraints/restrictions > (particularly if the site is an Intranet hosted within an internal > network). The CMS makes it easy to update styles in this situation! > > If you need to create specific styles for SmartEdit mode, or for > specific language variants - then simply manage these within a Content > Class. Any style within the referenced stylesheets can easily be > overridden within the CMS. > > The main reason to keep stylesheets out of the CMS is to cut down the > amount of 'manual' duplication required to copy styles from the > 'cutup' templates. Whenever you need to manual deploy changes, you > will always need to re-test everything in case you screwed something > up (which can easily happen from time to time!!!!) > > Cheers, > Kim > > > > > On Nov 19, 4:11 am, NP <[email protected]> wrote: > > I have always had an issue with RedDot and stylesheet handling. > > Whenever CSS changes have to be made, i generally receive changes made > > by front-end developers to static CSS files, which I then have to diff > > with the files on the RedDot server. This is a miserable diff because > > RedDot does all kinds of crazy things with white space, not to mention > > that all the images have to be replaced with placeholders (or you can > > put your images into the file system, but then they have to be > > repeated on the CMS and publishing targets). > > > > On my next project I was planning on trying a new tactic: separate CMS > > and static sites. The gist of it is that all style sheet references > > would be full URLs referencing the static site, like: > > > > <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://static.mysite.com/ > > mystyle.css" /> > > > > instead of re-creating all the style sheets in RedDot and inserting > > placeholders for them. This way, when the front end work is done, the > > changes get pushed to that static site and RedDot will start reading > > those styles in immediately, eliminating the need for long and error- > > prone updates. > > > > Anyway, I wanted to get some feedback from the community before I give > > it a try since it seems a little too good to be true and I feel like I > > might be missing something. Anyone have any thoughts? > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "RedDot CMS Users" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/reddot-cms-users?hl=. > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RedDot CMS Users" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/reddot-cms-users?hl=.
