google's use of class names

Question

i noticed a very strange way of naming classes in G+ and gmail..

example: a-b-h-Jb a-b-Rf-dB a-Rf-dB d-s-r (see G+'s code for yourself!)

who the hell does that? impossible to keep track of what you did in future.. same for gmail.

it is a known way of doing css that i am unfamiliar with? is it OOCSS? if a googler is reading this, can you please explain? Or if you are not the one who wrote the code, then please share your thoughts or prove that i am a dumb ass and don't know about a fairly common css naming 'good practice' (can i even call it that?)

Answer 1

Google uses something called the Google Web Toolkit (or simply GWT) to compile Java "applications" into their Javascript/HTML/CSS counterparts. GWT was used for GMail and Google Wave and my assumption is that it was also used for G+.

The GWT "compiler" (CS purists would never call GWT a compiler but the term fits) programatically names Javascript functions, CSS classes, HTML form IDs, etc. so they are almost never something legible.

Answer 2

At a guess, they probably have everything written out nicely in full at some point, and then put it through some program to compress it (reduce the length of variables). This reduces readability but also reduces file size, improving load times in theory.