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Hell Yes CSS

wizardzines.com

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Re: Hell Yes CSS

#61

Post by earwaxauditor »

brundolf wrote: post #33

I wrote a (much shorter) article in a similar vein a few years ago: https://css-tricks.com/css-is-awesome/ I find it fascinating (saddening, but fascinating) that so many programmers are so turned-off by CSS and find it so unintuitive. I almost want to set out on a research project to figure out why that is. My experience with it couldn't be more different. Here's one way of looking at CSS (which I didn't think of un…

Them: CSS is unintuitive.

You: Learning CSS is like taming a wild horse.

I think you are in agreement.

Re: Hell Yes CSS

#62

Post by resu_nimda »

brundolf wrote: post #33

I wrote a (much shorter) article in a similar vein a few years ago: https://css-tricks.com/css-is-awesome/ I find it fascinating (saddening, but fascinating) that so many programmers are so turned-off by CSS and find it so unintuitive. I almost want to set out on a research project to figure out why that is. My experience with it couldn't be more different. Here's one way of looking at CSS (which I didn't think of un…

Agreed. CSS is a more of an artistic design task than a programming one. You have to have the mindset of a sculptor, meticulously chipping away, fiddling with tiny bits as the figure gradually takes shape.

Now that I think about it, I feel like this is what CSS Zen Garden was all about. You have to embrace the fact that you’re gonna sit there tweaking margins and experimenting with various incantations.

Re: Hell Yes CSS

#64

Post by fourthark »

strenholme wrote: post #50
Puts wrote: post #41

When people complain about CSS they seem to forget that HTML and CSS started as basically an Word-alternative, or actually more like an RTF-format for the web. Doing anything other than that is simply misuse, and all features we slap on to CSS3 and HTML5 does not change this. That's the reason you can not center a div without "hacks". It's like those creative kids building super Mario-clones in Excel, It's certainly…

I agree with the general gist of what you’re saying: The web was originally designed to share text documents with some light formatting. As it turns out, HTML wasn’t even originally a Word alternative. The original web, as envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee used something called “semantic” markup. For example, a HTML page would have , and it was up to the browser and end user whether was bold, italic, or in another color.…

> that’s why CSS syntax looks nothing like HTML syntax

Also because CSS is rule-based rather than hierarchical.

Re: Hell Yes CSS

#65

Post by polytely »

yashap wrote: post #25

So, I’m an experienced backend dev, who only occasionally dabbles in frontend. And whenever I do, my CSS experience is basically: https://media1.giphy.com/media/13FrpeVH09Zrb2/giphy.gif I’d like to fix that, and learn CSS well. I’m not looking for a quick zine like this, more of an in-depth course, say roughly 5-10 hrs. Ideally free, but I’d pay if it’s good. Anyone have any favourites?

I always have https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/ open when I do css work. their guides are very good

Re: Hell Yes CSS

#66

Post by mantap »

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #60
unabst wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. td supported vertical-align:middle since css1. But you're not suppose to use tables because... hmm. The user sees no difference. Google doesn't care. The browser has no problem with it. It's easier to code. Oh, but it's bad practice... how? I feel like we just listed what qualifies as good practice. What is it called when following rules only leads to breaking rules? Hint: Sometimes it even leads to javascri…

That is not why you're not supposed to use tables for layout. It is for accessibility reasons. This is routinely ignored because approximately 0% of rich web apps are accessibility-friendly and people with screen readers have pretty much just learned to make do.

Wouldn't accessibility software back then have been able to deal with table based layout, considering most websites were constructed that way?

Re: Hell Yes CSS

#67

Post by goto11 »

randomsearch wrote: post #53
brundolf wrote: post #33

I wrote a (much shorter) article in a similar vein a few years ago: https://css-tricks.com/css-is-awesome/ I find it fascinating (saddening, but fascinating) that so many programmers are so turned-off by CSS and find it so unintuitive. I almost want to set out on a research project to figure out why that is. My experience with it couldn't be more different. Here's one way of looking at CSS (which I didn't think of un…

This isn't fully formed in my mind yet so go easy: Intuition is linked to elegance, an elegantly designed language is intuitive. An elegant language is one that starts with a few core principles and from that derives the rest of the language. Lisp is an example of a programming language that does this beautifully well. Usually (always?) such core principles themselves are taken from mathematics. After all, maths is h…

This is more a failure of the tutorials than of CSS itself though. CSS has a pretty simple and elegant core. You just have to understand the problems it was designed to solve.

- Readable documents at any screen dimensions or resolution (i.e. you should not need to scroll horizontally back and forth to read each line just because you have a smaller screen.)

- Incremental rendering - the document could be rendered as the data arrives over the network.

- The user should be able to increase the text size.

The "normal flow" layout model is designed in such a way that these constraints are fulfilled by default. You can make a layout which only works on a screen of a particular size, or where the user have to scroll horizontally for every line, but you have to do it deliberately.

I'd say the fundamentals of CSS is to understand the "normal flow" and the box model.

Re: Hell Yes CSS

#68

Post by the_other »

yashap wrote: post #25

So, I’m an experienced backend dev, who only occasionally dabbles in frontend. And whenever I do, my CSS experience is basically: https://media1.giphy.com/media/13FrpeVH09Zrb2/giphy.gif I’d like to fix that, and learn CSS well. I’m not looking for a quick zine like this, more of an in-depth course, say roughly 5-10 hrs. Ideally free, but I’d pay if it’s good. Anyone have any favourites?

Do you know anything about design? Learn some of that first. In the same way that programming makes loads more sense if you can do a little algebra and set theory, CSS makes more sense if you have some idea about how "the eye" moves across a visual space, what colour does and how typography developed (and thus defines the words designers use for type).

Re: Hell Yes CSS

#69

Post by eurasiantiger »

The amount of ignorance around CSS is astounding.

CSS doesn’t control how a page looks, it controls how the browser ”flows” a sequence of boxes and text onto the page one by one.

Block boxes are 100% wide, grow to fit their content, and stack vertically with other boxes.

Inline boxes grow to fit their content, and flow into the same rows with other inline content. They cannot have margins or paddings like block boxes.

Inline-block boxes flow with other inline content like inline boxes, but can be styled like block boxes.

Never have different types of boxes directly as siblings. Instead, create block wrappers for any inline content. This alone saves a lot of headache.

Re: Hell Yes CSS

#70

Post by atrus »

petr25102018 wrote: post #54

For folks who bought this or consider buying it, help me please understand why? I know I am not the target audience since I know CSS enough but I think that this is just a very short reference to some aspects of CSS that can't help you much?

I bought it. I'm not very good with CSS, as I haven't spent much time trying to learn it, and like the author, spent lots of time trying to puzzle over snippets I've been able to Google search. So, it's a nice ground level for me. I think it helped me understand CSS a little bit better.

I also quite enjoy her other writings, so it was also purchased to support her as well!

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