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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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