Category: The Ride

Structural Classes are classes that denote hierarchy in HTML tags particularly in div tags.

Example: Structure of a Component

[html]
<div class="comp">
<div class="cr">
<h class="accessible-name"></h>
<div class="ct">
Content
</div>
</div>
</div>
[/html]

Please note that h denotes a heading tag that varies from 1 to 6 depending on the HTML 4 outline.

The Structural Classes in this example are the following:

• comp (component)
• cr (container)
• accessible-name (heading or official name)
• ct (content).

Maximum Number of Classes

While building the structure, we will put generic and specific class names into each area. The suggested maximum number of classes to add into a single div is two (2).

The first class to be added is the generic class – which is basically, what the component is. The second class – if available – is the category it belongs to – which will become the specific class – this is usually inherited from its parent.

Example of Generic Class

In this example, we’ll use the Author Component.

The Author Component is part of an article byline wherein the name of the author is indicated (along with the date the article was published).

Name of component (generic class): Author
Category of component (specific class): Article Entry

Using this information, we can plot the classes into the structure.

[html]
<div class="comp author_comp article-entry-author_comp">
<div class="cr author_cr article-entry-author_cr">
<h class="accessible-name"></h>
<div class="ct author_ct article-entry-author_ct">
Content
</div>
</div>
</div><!– article-entry-author_comp –>
[/html]

This structure now features the following:

• a generic class (author_comp) which will be used in any instance of author in the HTML document
• specific class (article-entry-author_comp) which could be used to directly select the component (e.g., for use in CSS)

Other Guidelines

The objects inside ct (content) could simply have their generic classes – just like with the heading tag which only has accessible-name as its class.

There’s a need for web pages to be defined in which view it is in and in which type of container the whole view is in.

In this regard I am using ui-view--<view name> and ui-cr--<container name> (cr short for container).

UI View

UI View is the representation of the totality of the page or screen the user is in. Common examples of this is the Sign In screen of web apps, Dashboard, or Home views.

Example: If you are on the Terms & Conditions page or a web site, you could classify it as:

<div class="ui-view--terms-conditions">


UI Container

UI Container, on the other hand, is the type of user interface that contains the components or even the whole view (in this case, it is usually called screen or page).

Example: Using the example above, the page is contained in some sort of container – it is usually contained in a page or screen. For the sake of being device-agnostic, I would define it as screen – it being displayed thru a screen.

<div class="ui-cr--screen">

Other types of UI Containers are:

• screen
• dialog box
• drawer
• panel
• pop-over
• overlay

Erratum

In my entry, UI Type and State Class Naming Convention, I used UI Type to define a dialog box – while in this entry, I used dialog box as one of the standard UI Containers.

I am now using UI Type to define a specific UI – something that one invents and not a standard in the community. For example, you’ve created a three-column panel that slides one by one – you could dub it as “three-col-panel” thus <div class="ui-type--three-col-panel">

UI Container is a modifier – once you’ve added this class to a component, it modifies its standard structure to take the form of the said container. The same can be said for UI Type, but what it modifies is the whole view, including the containers. Simply put, you may be in Terms & Conditions view, and while it is contained in a screen or page, once you’ve added a three-column-panel UI Type, the layout transforms into a three-column type of layout.