Suitcase Fusion 3 User Guide for Mac OS - Extensis
Suitcase Fusion 3 User Guide for Mac OS - Extensis
Suitcase Fusion 3 User Guide for Mac OS - Extensis
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Rules with nuance<br />
These rules come from experience: once explained they are reasonable enough but aren’t necessarily obvious at<br />
first.<br />
• Name classes <strong>for</strong> their function, not their property values.<br />
If you name a class Big_Red_Arial, then when you change it to use Times New Roman in green, you<br />
won’t know what’s going on in your CSS, and neither will anyone else who reads it. If you name your<br />
class Additional_reading_header then it won’t matter what the color or font is; it is always going to<br />
be used <strong>for</strong> the same function.<br />
• When you apply a color to an element, think about the need to change its background color.<br />
Yellow text is not as readable on a white background as it is on black. This will become evident if you<br />
make the habit of previewing your pages and testing your CSS, but if you think about it in advance, you’ll<br />
be more aware of it when you look over the results of your handiwork.<br />
• Test your CSS and HTML in multiple browsers.<br />
If you look at your pages in only one browser, you may miss idiosyncrasies of display in other browsers.<br />
You may also inadvertently “fix” your CSS and HTML to work only in your specific browser.<br />
Advanced CSS strategies<br />
These are not necessarily things you’ll need to implement immediately, but may consider them as you become<br />
more com<strong>for</strong>table with CSS and explore more advanced features.<br />
• Use a browser reset CSS.<br />
Browsers have default settings <strong>for</strong> all elements; that’s why they can display a page even with no style<br />
sheet applied. You may find that some browser defaults are causing your page to be displayed in a way<br />
you didn’t expect. To avoid this, some developers use a “CSS reset” style sheet that sets all element<br />
properties to a known state, then add their specific styles after the reset.<br />
• Use a debugger in your browser.<br />
Many browser have built-in or add-on debuggers available, that can show you how your CSS is being<br />
interpreted <strong>for</strong> each element on the page. This can be invaluable in figuring out why something doesn’t<br />
look the way you thought it would.<br />
HTML<br />
• Use tables only <strong>for</strong> tabular data.<br />
It is sometimes tempting to use tables to <strong>for</strong>ce a page to have a certain layout. While you can pretty much<br />
guarantee the page’s look, changing it becomes much more difficult. CSS makes page layout much<br />
easier to do and much easier to change, and allows you to implement similar layouts on multiple pages by<br />
defining elements in one place.<br />
• Create your HTML first, then your CSS.<br />
You’ll save time by creating your HTML (at least a mockup) first. This way, you know all the elements of<br />
your page, and can think of the page as a whole and create the CSS based on the entire page, not<br />
piecemeal.<br />
• Use a DOCTYPE.<br />
And use the right DOCTYPE. HTML without a DOCTYPE is subject to what is referred to as “quirks mode.”<br />
The DOCTYPE tells the browser how to render the page; without it, the browser will make a guess at how<br />
to render it. If the browser guesses incorrectly, your page may be unreadable to some visitors.<br />
Fonts<br />
• Use a font manager (such as <strong>Suitcase</strong> <strong>Fusion</strong> 3).<br />
This helps ensure you have fonts installed properly and that you aren’t using corrupted fonts. It also helps<br />
you test your CSS fallback stacks; you can disable a font and make sure the next font in the stack is used<br />
instead.<br />
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