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+<h1 id="over-nesting">Over-Nesting</h1>
+<p>2019-01-06</p>
+<p>I think since our design industry moves so quickly and exciting new technologies get released almost daily, that we often forget some of the basics when writing CSS. I bring this up because I&#8217;ve recently worked on a few projects that show a slight disregard for proper class&#47;selector nesting.</p>
+<p>Now it&#8217;s completely understandable why designers and teams alike shrug off the concept of &#8220;over-nesting&#8221;:</p>
+<ul>
+<li>As a team we know the structure of our code (no outside party needs to interact with it)</li>
+<li>Everything is written in <code>insert pre-processor here</code> - so it&#8217;s cleaner&#47;compiled anyway</li>
+<li>It&#8217;s <em>technically</em> DRY</li>
+</ul>
+<p>I personally believe these are all weak excuses that don&#8217;t justify the poor experience future maintainers of your code will face. <em>You should always write your code with the idea someone completely new to the project will have to maintain it</em>.</p>
+<p>Let&#8217;s look at an average example of poor nesting that I&#8217;ve seen out in the wild:</p>
+<pre><code>&#47;* These children elements can&#39;t be used outside
+of the parent - not very flexible *&#47;
+.main-container {
+ .child-container {
+ &#47;* This class specificity is too deep *&#47;
+ .sub-child-container {}
+ }
+}
+</code></pre>
+<p>Even if you know a child element will never be structured outside of it&#8217;s parent, what harm does it cause to still place it out of such deep specificity?</p>
+<pre><code>&#47;* This code is far more reusable *&#47;
+.main-container {}
+.child-container {}
+.sub-child-container {}
+</code></pre>
+<h3 id="exceptions">Exceptions</h3>
+<p>As with anything, there are exceptions to the <em>rule</em>. If the nested elements pertain to the parent itself, it makes complete sense to group these stylings together. A button or link item are excellent examples of this:</p>
+<pre><code>.btn-lg {
+ &#38;:hover {}
+ &#38;:active {}
+ &#38;:disabled{}
+}
+
+.link-item {
+ &#38;:hover{}
+ &#38;:focus{}
+}
+</code></pre>
+<p>Of course, this is all easier said than done. Limitations exist within teams or even on an individual level that might make this impossible to change. Maybe you don&#8217;t have the authority to rework your current CSS or it would eat up too many cycles and time is valuable - especially in the world of startups. </p>
+<p>I&#8217;m not saying this is <strong>the only way to structure CSS</strong> - I&#8217;m only trying to make the lives of future designers&#47;developers easier moving forward. </p>
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