Then I’m curious what you think is the best way to customise the UI. I do understand you find this a bit too much though. And no, it is not really necessary to go this far, because you can already get really far by using non-classname CSS selectors for most cases. But it is hacky and inconvenient. And since I read in this thread you were considering SCSS, I thought of taking this a step further. In that case I think BEM can be really helpful.
BEM's verbosity is its main benefit imo, because it gives you info about how elements relate to each other in components and what states there are (using modifiers). It reduces naming inconsistencies and makes it easier to name elements. Plus it makes really clean SCSS files, since you can do:
.note-list-controls {
…
&__search {
…
}
}
But I realise most of the Joplin themes don’t go so far with theming the UI as I have. But maybe this is because it’s hacky, hard for people with little CSS experience or too cumbersome for people with CSS and/or design experience.
For now I will just add a few classnames for the elements that can’t be styled in a different way. But I'm curious to see what's in store for the UI in the long run. I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, but I see plenty of things that can be improved (and am willing to help ).