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Show HN: Picnic CSS Build System

6 points by franciscop 12y ago

xrstf 12y ago
I honestly don't get this article. From the first looks, it seems like some CSS framework has its own build system now. Fine. (BTW, I thought SASS was a language, not a build tool). But the second half of the story is a complete mystery to me. I read stuff like > Enter the absolute url containing your style within “external assets”. So ... are you hosting my code on your site? Why would I ever want to trust some external site to host my CSS? Or am I supposed to use the picnicss build logic to create my own concatenated CSS files? If I am supposed to do it locally, what's the advantage over using grunt/gulp and simply include the (previously downloaded) picnicss files? > 5. [optional] Set the option “fresh” if you are developing it, to keep updating the style on each call. How? When I develop, my code runs on somesite.local, so you can't possibly fetch the code from my localhost. And even if I used it on some public-facing development site, this roundtrip would dramatically slow me down. Changing the build logic to provide a single CSS file containing Picnicss is a fine thing to do, but I don't get all the future plans and stuff. And I haven't learned a single bit about why doing the CSS magic on demand via Express is a good thing, what challenges you had to overcome and what to take home from this.
- franciscop 12y ago
  That is completely true and I didn't think of it. When first I made the external assets thing, I was thinking of external plugins that were publicly available in places like github. I'll keep only the changes for the story not to confuse anyone and I will update it when something is working, sorry about that.
davegauer 12y ago
I haven't tried the new build system yet, but from perusing the new site, the additions to Picnic CSS 3.0 look to be exactly what I would have asked for if I had bothered to ask: flat default style, modularity,...and the option to have a modal box! I really feel like I've picked the right "horse" at the race with Picnic since it's been so actively improved since it was first introduced. Thank you for continuing to agonize over a few Kb of file size. It's the well-crafted minimalism of projects like this and Mithril.js that keep me excited about the future of web development.
- franciscop 12y ago
  Thank you for your words, it's what I found lacking by using it in different projects. If you are using Picnic in some projects, I'd love to see it in action (:

6 points by franciscop 12y ago

xrstf 12y ago

I honestly don't get this article. From the first looks, it seems like some CSS framework has its own build system now. Fine. (BTW, I thought SASS was a language, not a build tool). But the second half of the story is a complete mystery to me. I read stuff like > Enter the absolute url containing your style within “external assets”. So ... are you hosting my code on your site? Why would I ever want to trust some external site to host my CSS? Or am I supposed to use the picnicss build logic to create my own concatenated CSS files? If I am supposed to do it locally, what's the advantage over using grunt/gulp and simply include the (previously downloaded) picnicss files? > 5. [optional] Set the option “fresh” if you are developing it, to keep updating the style on each call. How? When I develop, my code runs on somesite.local, so you can't possibly fetch the code from my localhost. And even if I used it on some public-facing development site, this roundtrip would dramatically slow me down. Changing the build logic to provide a single CSS file containing Picnicss is a fine thing to do, but I don't get all the future plans and stuff. And I haven't learned a single bit about why doing the CSS magic on demand via Express is a good thing, what challenges you had to overcome and what to take home from this.

franciscop 12y ago
That is completely true and I didn't think of it. When first I made the external assets thing, I was thinking of external plugins that were publicly available in places like github. I'll keep only the changes for the story not to confuse anyone and I will update it when something is working, sorry about that.

davegauer 12y ago

I haven't tried the new build system yet, but from perusing the new site, the additions to Picnic CSS 3.0 look to be exactly what I would have asked for if I had bothered to ask: flat default style, modularity,...and the option to have a modal box! I really feel like I've picked the right "horse" at the race with Picnic since it's been so actively improved since it was first introduced. Thank you for continuing to agonize over a few Kb of file size. It's the well-crafted minimalism of projects like this and Mithril.js that keep me excited about the future of web development.

franciscop 12y ago
Thank you for your words, it's what I found lacking by using it in different projects. If you are using Picnic in some projects, I'd love to see it in action (: