Local vs. Global Styling in Next.js

Next.js is used to work on and handle complex front-end projects. It is developed to learn how to arrange JavaScript instructions, but it doesn’t comprise fabricated arrangements about sorting CSS.

Working within the CSS framework, I have found a set of organizational patterns that I think both employ the best CSS practices and correspond to the guiding theories of Next.js. In this blog post, we’ll develop a site (a coffee shop!) together to showcase these organizational patterns.

Writing “Obsolete” CSS

At first, if you look through Next.js, you may be thought to utilize a few types of CSS-in-JavaScript libraries. However, there may be advantages based on the project, CSS-in-JavaScript introduces several technical ideas. It needs to use the latest external library, which puts it at the bundle size. Plus, CSS-in-JS can leave a performance impact by making additional offerings and subordinations on the global state.

In addition, the entire idea of making use of a library like Next.js is to statically provide assets as soon as possible. So, it doesn’t make much sense to use JS that requires it to be compiled and run in the browser to make CSS.

Design Tokens

In any CSS setup, there’s an obvious advantage of saving all globally shared values in variables. And if the client is asking for a color change, then making the change is a one-liner rather than a big find-and-replace mess. As a result, the main part of our Next.js CSS setup will be gathering all global values as design tokens.

We’ll utilize built-in CSS Custom characteristics to collect these design tokens. We should mention that (in some projects) we have picked to use SASS/SCSS variables for this aim. And I didn’t find any benefit of it, so I generally just add SASS in a project whenever I feel that I require other SASS features (mix-ins, importing files, iteration, and so forth). On the contrary, CSS custom characteristics also function with the cascade and can be modified over time rather than statically running. So, for now, let’s stick with plain CSS.

In our styles/ library, let’s create a new design_tokens.css file:

Obviously, this list will be increasing over time. After we add this file, we have to jump over the pages/_app.jsx file, which is the prime structure for all of the pages and ads.

I love to assume the design tokens as the adhesive paste that balances consistency across the project. We will refer to such variables on a global standard, also within individual elements, making sure an integrated design language.

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Global Styles

Now, let’s insert a page to our site! We need to jump into the pages/index.jsx file. This is our landing page. We’ll remove all the boilerplates.

However, it will appear a bit simple, so now just add a few global styles for regular elements, for instance, <h1> tags. I prefer to think of such styles as “considerable global defaults.”) We may change them in particular cases, but they’re a nice guess as to what we will want if we actually don’t know.

I’ll insert this in the styles/globals.css file. This fetches by default from Next.js). However, this version is pretty simple and basic, but the globals.css file doesn’t generally end up requiring to get too big. Here, I design basic HTML elements such as headings, main body, hyperlinks, and so forth. You don’t need to wrap these components in React components or to continuously insert classes just to give basic style.

I also added a reset for default browser styles. Sometimes, I will get some site-wide structure style to give a “sticky footer,” for instance, but they just require it if all pages have the same layout. Otherwise, it will require to be ranged inside individual components.

I usually add some type of styling to point out interactive components for keyboard users when concentrated. It’s right to create it an integral area of the website’s design DNA.

Utility Classes

One segment where our main page could particularly enhance is that the text presently always increases to the sides of the device screen. So, let’s restrict its width. For this, we require this structure on this page.  But I expect that we might require it on other pages as well. This is an excellent practical use case for a utility class.

I attempt to utilize utility classes thriftilyrather than as an alternative for only writing CSS.  I think this scenario meets all three basic requirements, so just create a new CSS file styles/utilities.css and add. Thereafter, let’s insert import ‘../styles/utilities.css’ to the pages/_app.jsx. At last, we need to change the <main> tag in the pages/index.jsx to <main className=”lockup”>. 

Source: https://activatewebsite.com