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The CSS Zen Garden dream, finally shipped

josprague.com

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Re: The CSS Zen Garden dream, finally shipped

#101

Post by yosito »

croisillon wrote: post #8

good good but are there really websites with 2 or more variously different designs for the same content, like Zen Garden did?

Absolutely. When I first started building websites in the early 2000s, I was building site networks, where individuals would want their own themable websites quickly spun up. They all used the same backend system and components, each with unique designs and custom stylesheets. This pattern is incredibly common, and a lot of themable website building platforms are built on it.

Re: The CSS Zen Garden dream, finally shipped

#103

Post by yosito »

defenestration wrote: post #6
muglug wrote: post #5

> There’s one honest footnote. I'm so tired of AI writing

It's a pity. Spending so much time to ship the CSS dream (clean, well-thought-out) and then using AI-talk to share it with the world.

I used AI to get the post out quickly, but I've gone through and manually re-written it today.

Re: The CSS Zen Garden dream, finally shipped

#104

Post by yosito »

StanAngeloff wrote: post #31
muglug wrote: post #5

> There’s one honest footnote. I'm so tired of AI writing

The below is a selected copy of the blog post, unbelievable that it didn't get unslopped: > [..] , and on a site like this one that matters more than architectural purity. [..] Nothing in it depends on a build step [..] That distinction is worth keeping in mind [..] What matters is [..]

I've unslopped it now. Thanks for the feedback.

Re: The CSS Zen Garden dream, finally shipped

#105

Post by yosito »

cyberax wrote: post #21

Oh yeah. The fucking CSS Zen Garden. It started the trend that led to utter degradation of any usability in modern web interfaces. The idea was to make HTML decoupled from presentation, but the feeble CSS of that time could not express any real layouts. So very quickly web designers started to just hard-code pixel widths into the CSS, removing any dynamic sizing. For example, on this very page: https://csszengarden.c…

Your frustrations with the state of CSS 2.0 at the time were quite common, and part of what CSS Zen Garden aimed to inspire people to transcend. Now, CSS has evolved to the point where none of these hacks are necessary. You can now write pure, semantic HTML, and pure CSS, and implement full-fidelity designs that work across all modern browsers. That was the whole dream of the CSS Zen Garden, which wasn't fully realized at the time, but now it is.

Re: The CSS Zen Garden dream, finally shipped

#106

Post by yosito »

settsu wrote: post #42
yosito wrote: post #2

Author here. Like a lot of people on HN, Dave Shea's CSS Zen Garden is how I learned CSS in the first place. Building stylesheets for that one HTML file taught me to think about CSS as a system, and it stuck. Nearly two decades later I got to build the design system for the new Firefox.com together with a team from Lincoln Loop, on a contract engagement with Mozilla using pure, modern CSS with no preprocessors (almos…

I too was strongly inspired by the ideas that CSS Zen Garden was promoting, even if little to none of the real world work looked or worked like that. Always weird to see what posts really bring out the negativity on HN, but pay that no mind. Some people can't stand others being happy (and some are just having a bad day...) Be proud of what you accomplished and it must feel great to have contributed to something like…

Thanks for your kind words. Luckily, I thrive on criticism of my work, and don't take negativity personally. Working with the team at Mozilla on this truly felt really great!

Re: The CSS Zen Garden dream, finally shipped

#107

Post by yosito »

throwitaway222 wrote: post #34

CSS Zen Garden in the era of agentic software development.... I would say we're at a point where if the entire site was developed in tables or CSS or a Rust based engine emitting wasm positioned elements - no one would care anymore. Just give me a view and let me operate on things. We're going to have our "LCARS" moment soon. Where no one really needs to create a UI - the system creates one for you at time of use - b…

You're partially correct, in the sense that agentic software development means that exact tech stack choices no longer restrict what's possible or easy to quickly achieve. But having well designed technologies and design systems is actually more important than ever, because AI agents can use those systems to build UIs on the fly more efficiently, with less tokens, and achieving more consistency and reliability. If you want to build an AI system that creates UI for you on the fly, an essential component is a good design system. Take a look at how Claude Design works: if you want to create a design there, one of the first things it encourages you to do is to build a design system, and underneath, that feature has been programmed to use specific frameworks that are also carefully designed and built to make agentic software development more efficient.

Re: The CSS Zen Garden dream, finally shipped

#108

Post by matheusmoreira »

plastic-enjoyer wrote: post #97
matheusmoreira wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI-generated rubbish Implies you'd accept it if it wasn't rubbish. Seriously doubt your filter is based on quality. > you’ve earned the ridicule of the whole world As if human writing immunizes you from that. Published an article about garbage collection and had people complain about my human voice. One went so far as to suggest I had mental issues. I received praise too but some things you just never forget. Best…

I’ve never said that you don’t deserve to be ridiculed when you write human rubbish, but I haven’t claimed the opposite either. However, I do believe that you definitely and without exception deserve to be ridiculed when you produce AI-generated rubbish.

Analyze the game theory of what you just proposed. Have AI effortlessly generate an article for your idea, get ridiculed. Put a lot of time and effort into it instead, maybe get ridiculed anyway.

It's gonna be a no brainer for a lot of people.

Re: The CSS Zen Garden dream, finally shipped

#109

Post by yosito »

schrijver wrote: post #87
yosito wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly, I have other, more important stuff going in my life. I did write a lot of this post myself, but used AI to flesh out some of the details because otherwise between my perfectionism and tendency to overthink blog posts, I would have never gotten around to publishing this.

If you think other things are more important than writing, why would you expect anyone to take the time to read it ? It’s just not a very efficient strategy, it might work for some readers, but as the comments show it’s a big turn off for many. Where it says “There’s one honest footnote”, that’s really grating, like the other commenter I also stopped reading there. That’s not necessary rational, it’s just that we are…

My approach is more "ship fast, iterate later". Your criticism of AI slop is valid and I share it. I've manually re-written the post today, no more AI slop. Of course, that came with the opportunity cost of not spending time on 100 other projects competing for my attention. AI has enabled me to do a lot more with my limited resource of attention.

Re: The CSS Zen Garden dream, finally shipped

#110

Post by matheusmoreira »

nixon_why69 wrote: post #96
matheusmoreira wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is metaphysical. If AI can produce the exact same output a human would, does it matter who made it? It's possible for the ideas to come from the author while the writing is outsourced to someone else. Ghostwriting is an established practice. Effort involved in writing sounds a lot like the "sweat of of the brow" doctrine, which is rejected even by copyright monopolists.

It's about effort into thinking. If no effort went into either thinking or writing, then I'll plead guilty to sweat of the brow doctrine. Again, just send me the prompt and I'll feed it to AI myself.

Reading is about learning interesting new ideas, enjoying a narrative. The suffering of the author is beside the point.

I can sympathize with the notion that AI writing currently sucks, but not that it's automatically invalid or deserving of mockery. Maybe one day we'll have far better models. Maybe they'll do a good job without inserting any load-bearing vocabulary.

Asking for the prompts is fine, but might not be sufficient. The process iterative, and may incorporate data that won't be published. For example, I recently published a Sol/Fable benchmark article. It would be trivial for anyone to prompt a new version of the article if they had the raw benchmark data, but this data will never be published.

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