docs(material/theming): revise customizing-component-styles

guides/customizing-component-styles.md

@@ -1,73 +1,106 @@
 # Customizing Angular Material component styles
 
-## Styling concepts
+Angular Material supports customizing component styles via Sass API as described in the [theming
+guide][]. This document provides guidance on defining custom CSS rules that directly style
+Angular Material components.
 
-There are 3 questions to keep in mind while customizing the styles of Angular Material
-components:
+[theming guide]: https://material.angular.io/guide/theming
 
-1. Are your styles encapsulated?
-2. Are your styles more specific than the defaults?
-3. Is the component a child of your component, or does it exist elsewhere in the DOM?
+## Targeting custom styles
+
+### Component host elements
+
+For any Angular Material component, you can safely define custom CSS for a component's host element
+that affect the positioning or layout of that component, such as `margin`, `position`, `top`,
+`left`, `transform`, and `z-index`. You should apply such styles by defining a custom CSS
+class and applying that class to the component's host element.
+
+Avoid defining custom styles that would affect the size or internal layout of the component, such as
+`padding`, `height`, `width`, or `overflow`. You can specify `display: none` to hide a component,
+but avoid specifying any other `display` value. Overriding these properties can break components
+in unexpected ways as the internal styles change between releases.
+
+### Internal component elements
+
+Avoid any custom styles or overrides on internal elements within a Angular Material components.
+The DOM structure and CSS classes applied for each component may change at any time, causing custom
+styles to break.
+
+## Applying styles to Angular Material components
+
+While Angular Material does not support defining custom styles or CSS overrides on components'
+internal elements, you might choose to do this anyway. There are three points to consider while
+customizing styles for Angular Material components: view encapsulation, CSS specificity, and
+rendering location.
 
 ### View encapsulation
 
-By default, Angular component styles are scoped to affect the component's view. This means that
-the styles you write will affect all the elements in your component template. They will *not*
-affect elements that are children of other components within your template. You can read more
-about view encapsulation in the
+By default, Angular scopes component styles to exclusively affect that component's view. This means
+that the styles you author affect only the elements directly within your component template.
+Encapsulated styles do *not* affect elements that are children of other components within your
+template. You can read more about view encapsulation in the
 [Angular documentation](https://angular.io/guide/component-styles#view-encapsulation). You may
-also wish to take a look at
+also wish to review
 [_The State of CSS in Angular_](https://blog.angular.io/the-state-of-css-in-angular-4a52d4bd2700)
 on the Angular blog.
 
-### Selector specificity
+#### Bypassing encapsulation
+
+Angular Material disables style encapsulation for all components in the library. However, the
+default style encapsulation in your own components still prevents custom styles from leaking into
+Angular Material components.
+
+If your component enables view encapsulation, your component styles will only
+affect the elements explicitly defined in your template. To affect descendants of components used
+in your template, you can use one of the following approaches:
+
+1. Define custom styles in a global stylesheet declared in the `styles` array of your `angular.json`
+configuration file.
+2. Disable view encapsulation for your component. This approach effectively turns your component
+styles into global CSS.
+3. Apply the deprecated `::ng-deep` pseudo-class to a CSS rule. Any CSS rule with `::ng-deep`
+becomes a global style. [See the Angular documentation for more on `::ng-deep`][ng-deep].
+
+All of these approaches involve creating global CSS that isn't affected by style encapsulation.
+Global CSS affects all elements in your application. Global CSS class names may collide with class
+names defined by components. Global CSS is often a source of hard-to-diagnose bugs and is generally
+difficult to maintain.
+
+[ng-deep]: https://angular.io/guide/component-styles#deprecated-deep--and-ng-deep
+
+### CSS specificity
 
 Each CSS declaration has a level of *specificity* based on the type and number of selectors used.
-More specific styles will take precedence over less specific styles. Angular Material uses the
-least specific selectors possible for its components in order to make it easy to override them.
+More specific styles take precedence over less specific styles. Angular Material generally attempts
+to use the least specific selectors possible. However, Angular Material may change component style
+specificity at any time, making custom overrides brittle and prone to breaking.
+
 You can read more about specificity and how it is calculated on the
 [MDN web docs](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Specificity).
 
-### Component location
+### Rendering location
 
-Some Angular Material components, specifically overlay-based one's like MatDialog, MatSnackbar, etc.,
-do not exist as children of your component. Often they are injected elsewhere in the DOM. This is
-important to keep in mind, since even using high specificity and shadow-piercing selectors will
-not target elements that are not direct children of your component. Global styles are recommended
-for targeting such components.
+Some Angular Material components render elements that are not direct DOM descendants of the
+component's host element. In particular, overlay-based components such as `MatDialog`, `MatMenu`,
+`MatTooltip`, etc. render into an overlay container element directly on the document body. Because
+these components render elements outside of your application's components, component-specific styles
+will not apply to these elements. You can define styles for these elements as global styles.
 
-## Styling overlay components
+#### Styling overlay components
 
-Overlay-based components have a `panelClass` property (or similar) that can be used to target the
-overlay pane. For example, to remove the padding from a dialog:
+Overlay-based components have a `panelClass` property, or similar, that let you target the
+overlay pane. The following example shows how to add an `outline` style with `MatDialog`.
 
 ```scss
-// Add this to your global stylesheet after your theme setup
-.myapp-no-padding-dialog .mat-dialog-container {
-  padding: 0;
+// Add this to your global stylesheet after including theme mixins.
+.my-outlined-dialog {
+  outline: 2px solid purple;
 }
 ```
 
 ```ts
-this.dialog.open(MyDialogComponent, {panelClass: 'myapp-no-padding-dialog'})
+this.dialog.open(MyDialogComponent, {panelClass: 'my-outlined-dialog'})
 ```
 
-Since you are adding the styles to your global stylesheet, it is a good practice to scope
-them appropriately. Try prefixing your selector with your app name or "custom". Also note that
-the `mat-dialog-container`'s padding is added by default via a selector with specificity of 1. The
-customizing styles have a specificity of 2, so they will always take precedence.
-
-## Styling other components
-
-If your component has view encapsulation turned on (default), your component styles will only
-affect the top level children in your template. HTML elements belonging to child components cannot
-be targeted by your component styles unless you do one of the following:
-
-- Add the overriding style to your global stylesheet. Scope the selectors so that it only affects
-the specific elements you need it to.
-- Turn view encapsulation off on your component. If you do this, be sure to scope your styles
-appropriately, or else you may end up incidentally targeting other components elsewhere in your
-application.
-- Use a deprecated shadow-piercing descendant combinator to force styles to apply to all the child
-elements. Read more about this deprecated solution in the
-[Angular documentation](https://angular.io/guide/component-styles#deprecated-deep--and-ng-deep).
+You should always apply an application-specific prefix to global CSS classes to avoid naming
+collisions.