![]() We actually prefer it to using blank as the parent theme for the reasons above, and we’ve not noticed any significant differences in development time between builds that use blank and those that start from scratch. Sounds scary, but we promise you it’s not. We do have a few client’s sites where we have started completely from scratch with no parent theme whatsoever. The result is a smaller CSS file for production and a more maintainable codebase for development. At the same time, we don’t have to battle against the overly specific styles generated by the blank theme. ![]() It provides us with a quick start to builds alongside removing the need to repeatedly build the same common components over and over. ![]() This theme is a lot lighter, less opinionated and nowhere near as overengineered as the Magento blank theme. More recently we have developed our own ‘boilerplate’ theme to use as a starting point. In the past we’ve used Snowdog’s Sass port of Magento’s Blank Theme as a base, declaring it as the parent theme to our custom theme. While we do have clients that have come to us with Less already implemented on their sites, we start every new build with Sass. We’re fairly confident in saying most frontend developers prefer Sass to Less – which is great for our current team and any future team members. It sounds like we are making a rod for our own back by picking a competing pre-processor to the one chosen by Magento, but in fact it’s been a pretty good decision. Sass (SCSS) is Pinpoint’s choice of pre-processor. Less is Magento’s choice of pre-processor for writing CSS. As mentioned above, it’s so beautifully integrated with our editors that it’s possible to seamlessly run a Git command in your terminal and visually see that file get staged in the GUI, all within the same window. Most of the team use a combination of command line and GUI when it comes to Git. Git is the only sensible choice of version control tool these days – I remember SVN and I still have nightmares! We use Github to store and manage most of our repositories while a few of our clients use Bitbucket. From clearing caches to setting up admin users, the command line is a vital tool. Thankfully, our editors of choice also come with a terminal built in so you can be sure you’re running the right command on the right project – you don’t even have to leave the comfort of your editor’s window to do it. We choose to make our own custom Pinpoint extensions installable via Composer for ease of set-up and deployment. Using Composer, a package manager for PHP libraries, a single command can install Magento 2 and all its dependencies, along with any third-party extensions and their dependencies too. The command line is your friend with Magento 2. Even if you are very comfortable with branching, committing and pushing on the command line, a GUI for conflict resolution is so much nicer. Top VSCode plugins among the team include:īoth PhpStorm and VSCode connect with Git and allow you to use them as a GUI for your Git needs. Super lightweight, yet powerful and adaptable – there are so many plugins available you can practically build your own editor.įor those frontend Magento developers that find PhpStorm a bit bloated with features they are never going to use, this is a fantastic choice. Putting Magento aside for a moment, VSCode is probably the most popular choice for frontend developers. In Magento terms, this means everything except the `app` folder (and possibly the `pub` folder). Top tip: To avoid lengthy and resource draining indexing operations that are regularly experienced with PhpStorm, exclude files and directories you never edit from the indexer. When you combine that with the Magicento plugin it’s pretty unbeatable when it comes to Magento 2 development. It’s an extremely powerful IDE built specifically for PHP development. PhpStorm – the de facto choice for the backend team and the first choice for many frontend developers too. As long as formatting settings such as the size of the indents are universal, then the exact choice of editor is left to the individual developer. We don’t force a particular editor on our team as it’s quite a personal choice. Our frontend team here at Pinpoint is split roughly 50:50 on choice of editor or IDE (integrated development environment). However, there are many new toys to play with such as RequireJS, KnockoutJS, Grunt and Less and the time has also come to say goodbye to some old ‘favourites’ like prototypeJS. In this blog, we cover a number of considerations when it comes to Magento 2’s frontend workflow along with some insightful snippets direct from the world of development. There are some similarities – PhpStorm is probably still the editor of choice and jQuery is very much alive and well (for now at least). Magento 2 has been around for a while and it’s fair to say that the frontend workflow differs somewhat from that of Magento 1.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |