Get rid of bad CSS code and make it better

If you have been playing with codes for years, you already know how CSS has changed dramatically during the span of last few years. Now, there is a good number tools available at our disposal that we use to build lean, optimized and fast code. When the client asks to make some changes in the web design and the designer has coded a cascading style sheet, it will be pretty easy for the designer to make those changes without any change in the HTML file. Moreover, when the content is separated from the design, you can create different CSS files for different audience and device. A website designed using CSS can offer better accessibility to users.

Crafting a lightweight and fast code plays a key role in improving the performance and experience of the user. Here is what you can do to craft fast and lightweight code:

Find unused code

Sometimes when the website design is changed, some lines of code are no longer required. This unused code has an impact on the performance of the website as the needless code is sent to the browser. It sometimes bamboozles the browser while identifying the right style to apply. unCSS is a tool that can remove unused code from stylesheets. After HTML files are loaded and executed, the tool extracts all used stylesheets. All stylesheets are concatenated and rules are parsed by CSS-parse. Selectors not found in HTML files are filtered out and remaining rules are converted back to CSS.

Find duplicate code

Code consumes resources like memory and duplicate code occupies unnecessary memory. Designers tend to stick to the reusability rule, but still unknowingly write duplicate code. There is a tool, CSSCSS a redundancy checker. It helps in identifying duplicate properties across all CSS rules. Give it a CSS file, it will parse it and let you know which rule is duplicated.

Find poor code

After removing unused and duplicated code, there are several other improvements you can make in your CSS code. A detailed analysis of code can reveal several rules that you can simplify and refactor. Analyze-CSS and Parker are two popular tools used to analyze stylesheets and provide metrics on the quality of the code.

Write better code

Got rid of bad code? Fine, writing better code makes it even better. There are a couple of good guidelines available on the internet that can help you out in writing optimized CSS code.

If you are offering freelance website design services in Singapore or anywhere around the world, you have to write optimized code to boost the performance of the website.