

Show HN: Picnic CSS Build System - franciscop
https://medium.com/@fpresencia/picnic-css-3-0-build-system-5875860305c5

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xrstf
I honestly don't get this article. From the first looks, it seems like some
CSS framework has its own build system now. Fine. (BTW, I thought SASS was a
language, not a build tool).

But the second half of the story is a complete mystery to me. I read stuff
like

> Enter the absolute url containing your style within “external assets”.

So ... are _you_ hosting _my_ code on _your_ site? Why would I ever want to
trust some external site to host my CSS? Or am I supposed to use the picnicss
build logic to create my own concatenated CSS files? If I am supposed to do it
locally, what's the advantage over using grunt/gulp and simply include the
(previously downloaded) picnicss files?

> 5\. [optional] Set the option “fresh” if you are developing it, to keep
> updating the style on each call.

How? When I develop, my code runs on somesite.local, so you can't possibly
fetch the code from my localhost. And even if I used it on some public-facing
development site, this roundtrip would dramatically slow me down.

Changing the build logic to provide a single CSS file containing Picnicss is a
fine thing to do, but I don't get all the future plans and stuff. And I
haven't learned a single bit about why doing the CSS magic on demand via
Express is a good thing, what challenges you had to overcome and what to take
home from this.

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franciscop
That is completely true and I didn't think of it. When first I made the
external assets thing, I was thinking of external plugins that were publicly
available in places like github. I'll keep only the changes for the story not
to confuse anyone and I will update it when something is working, sorry about
that.

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davegauer
I haven't tried the new build system yet, but from perusing the new site, the
additions to Picnic CSS 3.0 look to be exactly what I would have asked for if
I had bothered to ask: flat default style, modularity,...and the option to
have a modal box!

I really feel like I've picked the right "horse" at the race with Picnic since
it's been so actively improved since it was first introduced. Thank you for
continuing to agonize over a few Kb of file size.

It's the well-crafted minimalism of projects like this and Mithril.js that
keep me excited about the future of web development.

~~~
franciscop
Thank you for your words, it's what I found lacking by using it in different
projects. If you are using Picnic in some projects, I'd love to see it in
action (:

