Scaling architecture with theming

[florianuphoff]

Hello Harry,

great work on bringing more patterns or architectures to css! Your approach is very generic so that developers have a high flexibility on how they apply ITCSS.
Currently I'm writing a masterthesis about (s)css code quality. Besides that, i am facing an exhausting job: Refactoring the SCSS of a huge project with more than 2 million visitors per month and setting up a design system.

So here are my questions:

1. Can you give an advice on how to integrate Atomic Design and BEM to ITCSS?
   You talked very shortly on how to integrate OOCSS in your DaFED#27 talk. In my opinion the components layer can be broken down to Atomics, Molecules and Structures/Organisms - depending on the desired granularity.
2. Is ITCSS suitable for larger theming?
   Our idea is to have some kind of a base theme. For each product the base theme is enhanced with colors, sizing and spacing. It is very challenging to define when declarations are part of a theme or not. I find myself struggeling with the definition of a clear theme layer. I've read your talk about 4 & 1/2 ways for theming in SCSS, but they did not fit perfectly. Maybe you were in the same situation before as i am.
3. Does the theme layer in ITCSS have any impact without overriding styles in the layers above?
   ITCSS follows the concepts of extending which leads to some kind of overrides. It would be great to keep the amount of overrides as small as possible.
4. OOCSS encapsulates skins from structures. Are there other ways to follow this concept except using the objects layer in ITCSS?
5. Are there best practices how to integrate third party styles?

I did my best in writing english. If you find any mistakes, forgive me please.
Really looking forward to read your answer and thank you in advance!