Roots – Better CSS
roots.cx
roots.cx
If you want people to use your library, they need to understand it. And if you want them to understand it, you need to be more compelling. Only after going back to make sure I'm critiquing you right did I realize this was part of a bigger toolkit at all.
Oh, and please increase the font size.
Let me try to explain why I have that intro paragraph there. Stylus is a very open and flexible language, and the same statement can be written many different ways. In addition, it's not as commonly used as something like sass, so there aren't well-known conventions that have arisen. All I was doing here was trying to establish and explain a couple conventions, to make life easier and more clear for everyone.
In addition, someone randomly posted the documentation page for the css library here rather than the homepage. This might be part of the reason why you were confused about what exactly this is.
Would love to hear more about how I could be 'more compelling' with this - always a great goal and something I hope I am able to do -- of course keeping in mind that this is a documentation page.
Open with a statement saying "Roots is a css framework that does X". Maybe have a follow up statement saying "Roots is based on the stylus language".
But I agree with you, the author should probably try an intro video on the homepage.
I found it relatively easy to use, but it was a pretty simple thing I was dealing with (one-page registration scheme). Having Coffeescript built in was quite nice, since I find it much easier to deal with.
I don't see it as being better than major CMS-style js libraries like Angular JS (which I started playing with recently), but it was pretty easier to learn for the toy application I was building. Being able to deploy to Heroku through the command line is neat, and the auto-reload on changing the HTML was pretty cool too.
(I'm not in any way affiliated to the person who wrote it, just someone who used it for a small project.)
AngularJS is a client-side javascript MVC framework and roots/axis are a static site compiler and a css library, respectively. It's easy to use roots with a client-side mvc framework if you prefer, I even have built in precompiled templates to make it easier.
My comment probably needed to be more thoroughly thought out before being posted.
My main issue with roots (and the reason I probably will not be using it in the future) is that I need to assume whoever takes over for me in 2 years will understand how to use Roots (and to make sure it is still updated). I can be pretty sure that Bootstrap will still be updated and maintained, but I can't be sure of the same with Roots. It makes it hard to use in a work context for anything major.
I will take a closer look at Roots and your pre-compiled templates for my personal projects, thanks for letting me know about it.
If anything, in a couple years roots will have expanded quite a good amount and, based on my current plans for the future, it will ship with a compiler that several orders of magnitude faster, be quite a bit more flexible with more languages and templates, be coupled with an optional cheap and efficient static hosting service with post-deploy compile hooks, and have a well-developed dynamic CMS that it can be paired with.
CMS as in Content Management Framework?
Dear all web developers, please resize your Web browser to about a mobile phone width before deploying. Just once. Just to check. Especially if your page is about a web technology.
I do hear this concern, and will try to adjust the responsiveness a little, but it's a much lower priority for me than actually improving the library (which I have been spending nearly full time on), since I assume the docs will never be actually used on a tablet and rather would be used on some sort of desktop that you are coding on.
input-warning(color = yellow)
Yellow on yellow on my monitor is pretty much impossible to read.
input-success(color = green)
is better but I need to concentrate to read the letters
simple-button
are more similar to tags to me, and the hover effect is not noticeable
Take this as constructive criticism, I just had the time to skim over the project. I wish you the best luck.
For the simple button, I don't disagree, it's more of a base to build on top of. I am seeing more buttons that looks like the in production these days though, and the lack of affordance is a little weird to me