MediaWiki talk:Common.css/Archives/2007

Please do not post any new comments on this page. This is a discussion archive first created in 2007, although the comments contained were likely posted before and after this date. See current discussion or the archives index.

Bloated CSS

What's so special about {{other languages}} (with less than 500 inclusions) that this code needs to be inlcuded in a global CSS file?

#otherlangs {
      margin:0.5em;
      padding:2px;
      border:1px solid #CCC;
      background:#FAFAFA;
      font-size:0.9em;
    }

spacing:… is simply wrong CSS ∴ Alex Smotrov 18:40, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, the template is going through a bit of an overhaul, as per a discussion at Metapub#Standardizing language templates. I'm not sure what the problem with including the CSS in the global file is, especially since it's not much code at all. EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:23, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Hello. The difference in coding size is substantial; adding 340 bytes (cached) to the stylesheet removes 1791 bytes (uncached) from Board elections/2007. The 340 bytes in the stylesheet are downloaded once and cached, but the 1791 bytes with inline CSS are redownloaded on every page load. Since {{other languages}} is the standard template for translation interlinking, it's used on many of the most viewed pages and its usage is steadily increasing. If a user visits even one page with translations, this significantly reduces the amount to transfer.

Even before client-side downloading, the smaller template code means it uses a fraction of the server resources to parse— the server currently reads through 2550 redundant bytes of inline CSS, and that's before the user even receives the page. I think the benefits of adding the CSS to the stylesheet far outweigh the slight 340-byte disadvantage.

As for the spacing attribute, that has nothing to do with the {{other languages}} CSS. I don't know what attribute the author meant; try asking whoever added it to fix it. —{admin} Pathoschild 01:49:38, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Let's see. There are 3 CSS rules there. My question was specifically about the first part (which I quoted above), which in my opinion should have stayed inline CSS.

Your answer covered the second part (#otherlangs span), which indeed saves a lot of inline styling and I'm not going to argue with that.

Please note that I also object to the last part (#otherlangs span.firstlang { border:none; }): if the template knows that the first span should have no border, it should make it without border without the need for global CSS.

As for the spacing attribute, I simply mentioned it so you could remove it along with your next Common.css revision. It doesn't do anything at all (except triggering CSS errors in console) ∴ Alex Smotrov 16:12, 29 October 2007 (UTC)