CSS does actually have a few built in constructs to break up work better @import does allow you to split up multiple files although this is not recommended for a production site as it increases the number HTTP requests.

My simple solution is a python app that will take your CSS files and combine them into a single file, at the same time removing any blank lines, this is not as advanced as a CSS minification tool but does a similar job. Combined with gzip compression on the server side for best results.

My biggest dislike with SASS and co is that the syntax is quite different from standard CSS, this means you cannot preview the output in your browser without a compile stage, slowing down the development workflow. My solution (thus far) does not introduce anything that is not supported already by your browser.

The only feature I added (which is entirely optional) is support for variables, again I wanted to ensure that the syntax is as similar as possible to standard CSS (they actually work more like a Make MACRO). A variable is defined using @define NAME VALUE; and can then be referenced with $NAME.

Anyway if your interested check out the project on BitBucket:
https://bitbucket.org/timsavage/xcss-parser/overview

The updated version code is now in the Django1.2 branch until I can work out how I will merge back into trunk while maintaining backward compatibility.

More to come soon…

My own efforts are writing a GPS daemon are hosted on Google Code. My daemon was written entirely in python and similar to Gypsy published information via dbus. But Gypsy has a number of advantages:

• Support for the garmin protocol
• More complete implementation of NMEA and all DBUS information
• Designed to be efficient for both client and server
• Includes all configuration to run as a DBus service

My only concern was a feature that I had written into my daemon and this was the ability to record an NMEA stream and replay the stream at any time. This becomes very useful when testing client software.

To this end I have written two patches for Gypsy to firstly add support for TCP and secondly add support for writing a time delta to the NMEA logs output by Gypsy as well as providing a Python tool for replaying these logs via a TCP socket.

The patches have been submitted to the Gypsy dev’s or can be fetched from the Freedesktop bugzilla.

Update: after feedback from the gypsy maintainers I have updated my patch to simply record a delta to the log file. As of Gypsy 0.8 gypsy can now read from a named pipe the patch also includes a python script that can be used to replay the log.

See Phil Haack’s post here.

<ul class="menu>
    <li class="first"><a href="/home">Home</a></li>
    <li class="selected"><a href="/page-1">Page 1</a></li>
    <li><a href="/page-2">Page 2</a></li>
    <li class="last"><a href="/page-3">Page 3</a></li>
</ul>

With the basic for/next loop over an ICollection producing this output is rather difficult.

My solution is an extension method for ICollection that provides additional information about the loop.

public static class CollectionExtensions
{
    public static IEnumerable<LoopItem<TSource>> Loop<TSource>(this ICollection<TSource> self)
    {
        if (self == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("self");

        var index = 0;
        var count = self.Count();

        foreach (var item in self)
        {
            yield return new LoopItem<TSource>(item, index, count);
            index++;
        }
    }
}

public class LoopItem<TSource>
{
    private int _count;

    internal LoopItem(TSource item, int index, int count)
    {
        this.Value  = item;
        this.Index  = index;
        this._count = count;
    }

    public TSource Value { get; private set; }

    public int Index { get; private set; }

    public bool IsOdd
    {
        get { return !this.IsEven; }
    }

    public bool IsEven
    {
        get { return this.Index % 2 == 0; }
    }

    public bool IsFirst
    {
        get { return this.Index == 0; }
    }

    public bool IsLast
    {
        get { return this.Index == (this._count - 1); }
    }
}

With this code in place we can now do generate the menu from a collection with:

<ul>
    <% foreach(var item in menuList.Loop()) {
        var classes = "";
        if (item.IsFirst) classes += "first ";
        if (item.IsLast) classes += "last ";%>
        <li class="<%: classes %>" >
            <%: Html.ActionLink(item.Value.Action, item.Value.Title) %>
        </li>
    <% } %>
</ul>

This makes displaying lists of data with specific classes a lot easier and simplifies your views. This same piece of code can also be used for rendering tables with odd/even rows.

Enjoy!

This version includes the following enhancements:

• References to all JavaScript and CSS libraries hosted by Google.
• References to optional extra’s that certain JS and CSS libraries offer.
• Tweaked UI (no more popup to select code) and enhancements from later releases of jQuery UI.
• Everything minified and optomised.

It’s been quite a busy weekend. First installing WordPress, crafting a template and a rebuild/new version of an old tool.

Anyway if anybody actually reads this I’ll be surprised.