Comments on: Call to designers: Single-line or multi-line CSS?

By: » Introducing: Compact Multi-line CSS! - sugarenia.com : Web Standards, Accessibility & other Girly Stuff

Fri, 29 May 2009 21:57:14 +0000

[...] CSS for relatively large projects is the way you structure it. We’ve already discussed single-line or multi-line in this blog, plus the way you define sections and so-called variables in your CSS are already [...]

By: Joel

Joel — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:59:47 +0000

I just wrote a tool that converts between the two formats:
http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/single-line-vs-multi-line-css-a-tool-to-end-the-debate

By: lexx

lexx — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:20:18 +0000

Single-line FTW!!!

Why use multiple lines? You ll have to scroll forever.

With Single-line CSS, I have everything in front of me.(24″ Wide monitor) Fast, tidy and Easy!

By: KCorax

KCorax — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:53:51 +0000

@sugar My point is that you can write your CSS however you want without worrying for waste of bytes. Just flip that flag in Apache somewhere.
Aah it could all be solved if we had an xml representation for CSS.

By: Sugar

Sugar — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:03:58 +0000

@KCorax

And your point is?

By: KCorax

KCorax — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:09:26 +0000

@sugar Sure that’s what I’m talking about. But for most platforms, either by hand or using some server mod, when the user tries to access a .css or .js file that gets compressed on demand. Look here for example this http://ub0.cc/3Y/0c in my blog isn’t really compressed. It’s a huge file with comments and so on. Compression is done on demand when a client requests it and cached for some hours at a time.

By: Sugar

Sugar — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:49:15 +0000

@KCorax

We’re talking development here, not deploy.

Most often than not, CSS is not monolithic – it usually evolves with the project and needs quite a lot of editing.

And most web designers code their CSS by hand, anyway, not in some obscure CSS-generating app.

By: KCorax

KCorax — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:53:02 +0000

Why stress yourself ? Most web app platforms and frameworks compress both css and javascript before sending it. Works this way for .net jsp most python stuff and RoR (not certain about the last one)

By: lunatik

lunatik — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:06:17 +0000

single line !
it’s just css , not some wierd c++ algos lol.
1) I just hate to use the scroll bar each time i want to modify a property.
2)multi line is a waste of bytes, of time , and contributing to global warming.

but i agree that multi line is propably easier when someone is starting web design.

By: Konstantinos Kouratoras

Konstantinos Kouratoras — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:45:53 +0000

Multiline of course, It’s more readable. And if the code is readable, no comments are needed!