CSS on a tight leash

My time at The Ministry is soon to draw to a close, and I have written some scintillating documentation as a parting gift. The most important by far is entitled CSS management (I have a way with words…).

What it boils down to is this: without management, your lovingly crafted CSS will become a tangled soup of despair, despondency and ignorance. This must not be allowed to pass. And this is exactly what has happened on two large corporate redesigns I’ve had the privilege to work on.

So, here is my solution:

1. Appoint a Guardian Of The CSS. One person solely responsible for upkeep of stylesheets.

2. Separate structure from presentation - ie all styling to be done via the stylesheets, not by inline or HTML styling.

3. CSS file structure

• core.css - global styles & immutable. Guardian only.
• specific.css - styles for specific pages (eg home page). Guardian only.
• temporary.css - open to everyone, workaday stylesheet.

4. CSS review process: the Guardian has a calendarised monthly task of incorporating styles from temporary.css into core.css and specific.css

Just to re-emphasise: this is a management issue, and is key to the upkeep of the stylesheets.