As already done for JavaScript, we continue our analysis of the 2017 front-end trends by analyzing the relative results […]
As already done for JavaScript , we continue our analysis of the 2017 front-end trends by analyzing the results related to CSS obtained through the ” Ashley Nolan’s Front-End Tooling Survey “. The first interesting survey data concerns skills, with almost 47% of respondents considering an advanced user, 26.4% a developer with intermediate skills and 16.3% an expert on the subject.
Hence a first conclusion: 10% of those who admitted having less than one year of experience in CSS development would still be described as a developer with advanced skills; in more than one case such declarations could easily be denied, especially considering the complexity of the matter and, even more so, taking into account the relatively recent availability of some constructs such as the Grid Layout Module .
The data concerning the diffusion of preprocessors is interesting, with about 63% of the interviewees who said they would use Sass . In second place PureCSS with 8%, specifically we speak of a solution often used in association with other preprocessors to have a greater number of features; among the latter it is possible to mention AutoPrefixer, a widespread PostCSS plugin that parsing the style rules in order to add the prefixes of the various vendor browsers.
39% of respondents would use Modernizr in their current projects, which is particularly high considering that older versions of Internet Explorer have long lacked support from Microsoft; 14% would instead use Stylelint for the validity checks on the styles, probably for this aspect of the work the tools integrated in the IDEs and in the most common editors are preferred.
Also worthy of mention are the results relating to the naming methodologies, with a preference for BEM (40%) and CSS Modules (16%), OOCSS (15%) and SMACSS (13%) in immediate succession.
Only 14% of the sample would have claimed not to use any preprocessor preferring a “raw” approach to CSS coding, while 23% would have claimed not to adopt any library, framework or methodology for naming.
Via Craig Buckler
