[TYPO3-dev] Master Style 4 Typo3

[S. Teuber]

Hi Johannes,


> Right now every extension tends to introduce its own new styles - new 

Yeah, and that's bad practice. As Matthew already pointed out in his 
post, it's enough to add a class to some (for most extensions propably 
*one*) tag that's framing the extension's output. The rest can be done in 
the stylesheet using the cascade.

Using the cascade this way will eliminate nearly all of the problems you 
mentioned to backup the need for a master style.

If you combine this cascading concept with the use of external HTML 
templates, site owners gain the freedom to insert additional classes or 
ids if they really need them. Seperating the HTML from the (PHP) code 
plus seperating the layout (css) from the content (html) should be the 
basic groundwork in any extension that's considered to have some level of 
quality.

So, maybe instead of writing some master style documentation, we should 
write some clear, short advice on best practices in terms of coding 
extensions. Very basic, not as specific and blown as the current "Coding 
Guidelines" document on typo3.org, which deals with specific tasks like 
database queries etc. and thus is rather long.

I'm thinking of something that's a bit like the 12 rather short pages on 
"coding standards" that can be found on the PEAR website [1]. After all, 
the basic principles of good www coding are not that complicated or hard 
to understand.

Sven

[1] http://pear.php.net/manual/en/standards.php