Rethink purge settings and dist

[stephiescastle]

Right now, the compiled CSS is purged according to usage in www-frontend. (note: I think we'd change this to purge against our HTML stories once those are ready.)

This means that other tailwind classes are removed from explorer-1.min.css. Should we also provide a version that doesn't purge them? The file would be much larger, but then users could have access to other Tailwind classes that we aren't using and purge them on their own.

I noticed this when testing BaseCarouselCards in index.html. I used p-28 for each slide. When testing this same HTML with the purged CSS, p-28 was purged, so some formatting was lost.

[stephiescastle]

Response from @Scotchester:

This means that other tailwind classes are removed from explorer-1.min.css. Should we also provide a version that doesn't purge them? The file would be much larger, but then users could have access to other Tailwind classes that we aren't using and purge them on their own.

I think it could be nice to offer this as an extra CSS distribution, like explorer-1_tailwind-complete.min.css or something.

Or at least offer advice on how a consumer of Explorer 1 can get access to those. I think the options for this would be:

• Including a Tailwind CSS dist if they're using the Explorer 1 CSS dist
• By overriding the purge settings if you're using Explorer 1 in conjunction with your own front-end build process

Does that sound right?

[stephiescastle]

I think the options for this would be:

• Including a Tailwind CSS dist if they're using the Explorer 1 CSS dist

• By overriding the purge settings if you're using Explorer 1 in conjunction with your own front-end build process

Does that sound right?

@Scotchester Yes, I agree with that approach!

[stephiescastle]

Another approach that users can take that would eliminate this problem:

• use the Tailwind CDN
• use our custom TailwindCSS config with it
• include only the scss partials for Explorer 1 (we could create another dist file that's just the scss minus Tailwind)

[stephiescastle]

Other versions of compiled CSS we should consider providing:

• internal styles
• just the components (no foundations)
• just the app bar
• everything included (no purging)
• [...:thinking:...]