5 ms·

The CSS Trashman

52 points by begriffs 14y ago

meric 14y ago
This is awesome. One thing though. Instead of having to wait for the results to be calculated how about emailing the results when it's done? That way there's less need to keep the page open.
- begriffs 14y ago
  Good idea, especially with the HN traffic overloading my worker dynos right now. I'm scaling them up, but I'm afraid what this might cost...
  - meric 14y ago
    Also what about caching past queries for X days?
  - ErikHuisman 14y ago
    Why not use the users browser itself to calculate the results?
- Cryode 14y ago
  Gists, perhaps?
rodion_89 14y ago
Totally killed all of my media queries.. http://jairaj.org http://jairaj.org http://www.csstrashman.com/styles/495 http://www.csstrashman.com/styles/495
- begriffs 14y ago
  Yeah, it's still beta. It's powered inside by this open source library https://github.com/begriffs/css-ratiocinator https://github.com/begriffs/css-ratiocinator Please submit issues on github and I'll work on addressing them.
  - saint-loup 14y ago
    Hi, "Ratiocinator" is a nice name. Is "begriffs" a reference to the Begriffsschrift ?
    - begriffs 14y ago
      Yes it is! This is kind of nerdy, but I have a picture of Frege hanging on my wall for inspiration. :) Is Saint-Loup a reference to Proust's friend?
      - saint-loup 14y ago
        It is. :)
jonchris 14y ago
breaks: <title>Application Error</title></head> </head> <body> <iframe src="//s3.amazonaws.com/heroku_pages/error.html"> <p>Application Error</p> </iframe> </body>
creigh 14y ago
Surprised to get a message about being in a queue. Have they heard of concurrency? Lots of people are doing it. Unless I dont understand what they're doing (Always a chance of that).
- Indyan 14y ago
  Its the latter. The bottleneck here is resource availability. This is a free service, running on Heroku. He probably can't afford to just throw new worker dynos at it. More about Job queuing: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/background-jobs-queueing https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/background-jobs-queuei...
begriffs 14y ago
Sorry for the outage. I ran past the free-level heroku db capacity. It's upgraded and the site is back up.
thejosh 14y ago
Could you add an email field so it emails us when the job is done?
platzhirsch 14y ago
Wouldn't it be better to use a random hash string for the resulting URL or none at all instead of a continuous counter which is incremented? I can easily walk through the submission and see the used URLs. But maybe that's just exaggerated.
mackmcconnell 14y ago
I have no problem waiting if the thing actually works and will clean up my css. After implementing the new styles, is it looking just as good?
Karn 14y ago
Sorry, I don't get the point of this. It took my CSS with related rules grouped together and spread them all over, and expanded my shorthand CSS into longhand. The file size change was minimal. Also, telling people "your X is garbage" isn't the best way to greet your users.
- Jgrubb 14y ago
  Try not to take it personally. Maybe you're not the target market.
thomasrambaud 14y ago
Not using a CSS rule in a single page doesn't mean you don't use it elsewhere => the generated CSS is necessarily wrong. This tool is useless but being a POC.
- deanclatworthy 14y ago
  Exactly. I minify my site's CSS but there are rules used on only some pages. Unless you crawl the whole of a website, this tool is useless for any site that has more than one page. You'd be better off using SitePoint's DustMeSelectors as it at least makes an effort to crawl the site's CSS: http://www.sitepoint.com/dustmeselectors/ http://www.sitepoint.com/dustmeselectors/ (bit out of date though, it seems)
  - bazzargh 14y ago
    Yes, 2.2 is out of date. DustMeSelectors 3.01 is now at http://www.brothercake.com/dustmeselectors/ http://www.brothercake.com/dustmeselectors/ (or just use the Firefox add-ons search to install it from Mozilla, not a random site)
geuis 14y ago
For a cross-browser, client side solution that you run yourself and have a lot of control over, check out Helium. http://github.com/geuis/helium-css http://github.com/geuis/helium-css.
- oyvindeh 14y ago
  Or for something you can run from command line, with no browser required (which may be a pro or a con, depending on your perspective), check https://github.com/operasoftware/ucss https://github.com/operasoftware/ucss. (Disclaimer: I wrote it.)
jwarren 14y ago
It's a nice idea, but it broke both sites I tried it on. I'm happy to supply bug reports if that'll help.
_cbdev 14y ago
In what sense is using absolute pixel values in your CSS better than using percentage of the parent element or em's? Last I checked, it was the other way round.

52 points by begriffs 14y ago

meric 14y ago

This is awesome. One thing though. Instead of having to wait for the results to be calculated how about emailing the results when it's done? That way there's less need to keep the page open.

begriffs 14y ago
Good idea, especially with the HN traffic overloading my worker dynos right now. I'm scaling them up, but I'm afraid what this might cost...
- meric 14y ago
  Also what about caching past queries for X days?
- ErikHuisman 14y ago
  Why not use the users browser itself to calculate the results?
Cryode 14y ago
Gists, perhaps?

rodion_89 14y ago

Totally killed all of my media queries.. http://jairaj.org http://jairaj.org http://www.csstrashman.com/styles/495 http://www.csstrashman.com/styles/495

begriffs 14y ago
Yeah, it's still beta. It's powered inside by this open source library https://github.com/begriffs/css-ratiocinator https://github.com/begriffs/css-ratiocinator Please submit issues on github and I'll work on addressing them.
- saint-loup 14y ago
  Hi, "Ratiocinator" is a nice name. Is "begriffs" a reference to the Begriffsschrift ?
  - begriffs 14y ago
    Yes it is! This is kind of nerdy, but I have a picture of Frege hanging on my wall for inspiration. :) Is Saint-Loup a reference to Proust's friend?
    - saint-loup 14y ago
      It is. :)

jonchris 14y ago

breaks: <title>Application Error</title></head> </head> <body> <iframe src="//s3.amazonaws.com/heroku_pages/error.html"> <p>Application Error</p> </iframe> </body>

creigh 14y ago

Surprised to get a message about being in a queue. Have they heard of concurrency? Lots of people are doing it. Unless I dont understand what they're doing (Always a chance of that).

Indyan 14y ago
Its the latter. The bottleneck here is resource availability. This is a free service, running on Heroku. He probably can't afford to just throw new worker dynos at it. More about Job queuing: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/background-jobs-queueing https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/background-jobs-queuei...

begriffs 14y ago

Sorry for the outage. I ran past the free-level heroku db capacity. It's upgraded and the site is back up.

thejosh 14y ago

Could you add an email field so it emails us when the job is done?

platzhirsch 14y ago

Wouldn't it be better to use a random hash string for the resulting URL or none at all instead of a continuous counter which is incremented? I can easily walk through the submission and see the used URLs. But maybe that's just exaggerated.

mackmcconnell 14y ago

I have no problem waiting if the thing actually works and will clean up my css. After implementing the new styles, is it looking just as good?

Karn 14y ago

Sorry, I don't get the point of this. It took my CSS with related rules grouped together and spread them all over, and expanded my shorthand CSS into longhand. The file size change was minimal. Also, telling people "your X is garbage" isn't the best way to greet your users.

Jgrubb 14y ago
Try not to take it personally. Maybe you're not the target market.

thomasrambaud 14y ago

Not using a CSS rule in a single page doesn't mean you don't use it elsewhere => the generated CSS is necessarily wrong. This tool is useless but being a POC.

deanclatworthy 14y ago
Exactly. I minify my site's CSS but there are rules used on only some pages. Unless you crawl the whole of a website, this tool is useless for any site that has more than one page. You'd be better off using SitePoint's DustMeSelectors as it at least makes an effort to crawl the site's CSS: http://www.sitepoint.com/dustmeselectors/ http://www.sitepoint.com/dustmeselectors/ (bit out of date though, it seems)
- bazzargh 14y ago
  Yes, 2.2 is out of date. DustMeSelectors 3.01 is now at http://www.brothercake.com/dustmeselectors/ http://www.brothercake.com/dustmeselectors/ (or just use the Firefox add-ons search to install it from Mozilla, not a random site)

geuis 14y ago

For a cross-browser, client side solution that you run yourself and have a lot of control over, check out Helium. http://github.com/geuis/helium-css http://github.com/geuis/helium-css.

oyvindeh 14y ago
Or for something you can run from command line, with no browser required (which may be a pro or a con, depending on your perspective), check https://github.com/operasoftware/ucss https://github.com/operasoftware/ucss. (Disclaimer: I wrote it.)

jwarren 14y ago

It's a nice idea, but it broke both sites I tried it on. I'm happy to supply bug reports if that'll help.

_cbdev 14y ago

In what sense is using absolute pixel values in your CSS better than using percentage of the parent element or em's? Last I checked, it was the other way round.