Bendyworks

You might as well learn it now, because you'll be using it in 6 months. Styleguide rails is a cool gem that builds a living, breathing styleguide for your site. You can add it to your project really easily (let's just do it right now):

gem install styleguide_rails

OR edit your Gemfile:

gem 'styleguide_rails'

and then bundle.

Lastly, you install the styleguide into your application:

rails generate styleguide:install

start rails and navigate to http://localhost:3000/styleguide. There should be a built-in _example_elements.html copied into your new app/views/styleguide/widgets/ directory. This is where your new styleguide widgets live (for more on how to use them, see "Using it" below). ...continue reading

"Want to see the future?" Dale Sande (@anotheruiguy) leaned toward me with a conspiratorial gleam in his eye. His laptop was crowded with code and design layouts. He proceeded to show me that I have been doing CSS all wrong.

My first mistake is using CSS at all. "If you're like most developers you start designing a web page from the top-left down.  This ends up painting you into a corner," Dale explains. Building style by stacking DOM elements together is like playing Tetris -- you will always lose in the end.

He believes in a modular inside-out approach to design, one where developers start by identifying and isolating repeated widgets of design, like navigation links, sections, and forms. CSS was not designed for this approach, and Dale believes that SCSS provides the necessary features to encourage proper modular reuse. ...continue reading