{"id":362578,"date":"2022-02-03T07:24:01","date_gmt":"2022-02-03T15:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/?p=362578"},"modified":"2022-02-03T07:24:04","modified_gmt":"2022-02-03T15:24:04","slug":"thierry-koblentz-atomic-css","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/thierry-koblentz-atomic-css\/","title":{"rendered":"The Making of Atomic CSS: An Interview With Thierry Koblentz"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I interviewed Thierry Koblentz<\/a>, creator of Atomic CSS<\/a>, to understand the history and background that led to making of the popular CSS framework. Thierry, now retired, has vast experience writing CSS at large scale and has previously worked as a front-end engineer at Yahoo!.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Thierry is widely credited with bringing the concept of Atomic CSS to the mainstream, thanks to his now classic 2013 article on Smashing Magazine, \u201cChallenging CSS Best Practices.\u201d<\/a> That article paved the way for many popular CSS libraries over the years. In this interview, Thierry returns to chronicle the history of Atomic CSS and reflect on its ongoing legacy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Thierry Koblentz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Rolling back the years to the early 2000\u2019s, how did you get into web development, especially writing CSS to make a living?<\/h3>\n\n\n

Thierry Koblentz:<\/strong> I taught myself HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as a hobby after moving to the U.S. in 1997.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, I was using FrontPage and was relying heavily on Newsgroups for guidance. I quickly became a regular on Macromedia NewsGroups and on CSS-Discuss<\/a>. Early on, I espoused the philosophy of the Web Standard Project<\/a> and got really interested in Accessibility. For years, front-end was nothing more than a hobby for me (my real job was an antique dealer). I would create a website once in a while but I was mostly writing and publishing (many) articles, sharing techniques I’d learned or “discovered.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paid off in the form of a phone call from Yahoo! in 2007, asking if I could help fixing and building stylesheets for the Yahoo! Site Solutions (YSS) website builder template. The job description: no HTML, no JavaScript, just CSS! And a lot of it!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

What was your day job at Yahoo! like?<\/h3>\n\n\n

TK:<\/strong> My role at Yahoo! changed a lot through the years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first job was to create stylesheets (\u00e0 la CSS Zen Garden<\/a>) for the YSS template. I then rewrote the markup and styles of the YSS website just before YSS was “shipped” to Bangalore (India) \u2014 where I was sent with my colleagues for “transfer of knowledge” purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a sidenote, it was the challenge of swapping stylesheets to create different designs for YSS that forced us to find a light<\/em> (non-js) solution for resizing videos on the fly; and that’s how I came up with “Creating Intrinsic Ratios for Video.”<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After YSS, I had the opportunity to only work on projects that started from scratch<\/em> (rewrites or otherwise) and I got more and more involved with Yahoo! FE. I edited and created many internal docs (i.e. CSS Coding Standards); participated in the hiring process (like everybody else in my team); led code review sessions; ran CSS classes and workshops; spoke at FED London; helped other teams with HTML\/CSS\/accessibility; was involved in decisions regarding technology adoption (i.e. Bootstrap or not Bootstrap); created libraries; reviewed internal papers; wrote proposals; etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another sidenote, during my eight years at Yahoo!, I may have written less than 100 lines of JavaScript. And if I didn’t quit or get fired from my job, it is thanks to Lingyan Zhu<\/a> and Renato Iwashima<\/a>; they helped me tirelessly when it came to setting up my environment or dealing with the command line (because, to this day, I am terrible at that).<\/p>\n\n\n