Labs are hands-on coding projects that you build along with Tonya as she explains the code, concepts, and thought processes behind it. You can use the labs to further your code knowledge or to use right in your projects. Each lab ties into the Docx to ensure you have the information you need.
Each lab is designed to further your understanding and mastery of code. You learn more about how to think about its construction, quality, maintainability, programmatic and logical thought, and problem-solving. While you may be building a specific thing, Tonya presents the why of it to make it adaptable far beyond that specific implementation, thereby giving you the means to make it your own, in any context.
A linter validates your Sass to coding standards. You will install the gulp node module: gulp-sass-lint. In this episode, you will install and code it into your gulp file. Then let’s run it to see what happens. Psst here is the link to the Sass Rem module.
Notifications send out a desktop message to alert you to errors and whatever message you want, such as “WooHoo your styles are done.” In this episode, you will install the following gulp packages: plumber and notify.
When you deliver your theme to your client for their live site, you will want to enqueue and use a minified stylesheet. Why? To speed up the web page’s loading, as the browser requests and downloads a smaller file. You will use a module called CSS Nano. There are a couple of different ones to use. In this episode, you will install and use the gulp-cssnano. Let’s walk through adding minification to our gulp tasks. You’ll also learn about the gulp sequencing order. And you will need the rename module too, to rename the minified file to style.min.css. Note: PostCSS […]
Did you notice the media queries are dispersed throughout your stylesheet? If you are using min-width (not max-width) media queries, then you can use the Media Query Packer node module.
Now that your styles are in Sass modules, when you are building, tweaking, and debugging your styles in the browser, it shows the stylesheet and not the respective Sass partial file. It becomes cumbersome to find where your styles are when you want to make a change. Sourcemap solves that problem for you. In the browser, it will show you the Sass partial file associated with the element instead of style.css. It will save you a lot of time and frustration as you are building. You are going to love this module. To install it locally into your theme, type […]
Next, you want to install and setup the autoprefixer package. The autoprefixer automatically handles the browser prefixing for you. No more having to specify all of the different prefixes for the browsers. Imagine the time that will save you. Seriously, you can just specify border-radius, for example, and the autoprefixer node plugin will take care of prefixing all the different browsers. In this video, I have you installing the wrong package, as I had you put this one in. Whoopsie. You don’t want gulp-autoprefixer. Why? Because in the next episode, we are installing PostCSS. You need the one that works […]
Bourbon will be depreciating the rem() function. Therefore, let’s replace it out. I show you in their code where it’s noted for removal, even though it’s not mentioned in the documentation. This is a good thing. Why? Because code changes and evolves. You need to be adaptable to adjust your codebase for changes. For example, if WordPress makes a change, you need to change your code too. Instead, we’ll use the sass-rem module. This video will walk you through the process as you will need to change the code too. Update – July 20, 2018 To get the pixel fallback […]
Whoops, I had you install the wrong Bourbon and Neat node modules. Oh poo. No worries this gives us an opportunity to try out the shortcut I shared with you in the previous episode. You will use this shortcut on every project as you copy/clone your starter theme. Also, we will begin fixing any typos and errors. When you run gulp, it will tell you where there are problems. I gave you a few errors, but we’ll correct each of them in this episode.
Let’s write the first gulp task in gulpfile.js.
The first step is to make sure you have gulp installed globally. You need to have both node and npm installed. Then do the following: Open terminal. Type: npm install gulp –g When it’s done installing, type: gulp -v If you get a version number, you are ready to rock and roll. Next let’s create the package.json boilerplate file. To do that, let’s run the init out of npm which will walk you through the options: npm init Just keep pressing the return (enter) key on your keyboard to select the defaults. When done, then open up the file. Now […]
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