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Stefano’s Linotype: Why Programmers Suck at CSS Design (CSS Guide)

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Re: Stefano’s Linotype: Why Programmers Suck at CSS Design (CSS Guide)

#21

Post by run4yourlives »

aristus wrote: post #19
tlrobinson wrote: post #15

"There is a general tendency to believe that programmers can’t style things because they have no style themselves. Yet, all of them will be able to tell you very quickly which one of two designs they like the best, even if they generally can’t verbalize why." There's a huge difference between being able to tell if something looks good and being able to design something that looks good. I think for most programmers th…

Any halfway intelligent human being can teach themselves a very wide variety of trades. Are you saying you are not intelligent? Or just lazy? If you practice a bit and learn some simple rules of composition, typesetting, and color, you can be a competent designer. Beyond that level you need native talent and drive but there is no excuse to be ignorant about related fields.

Any halfway intelligent human being can teach themselves a very wide variety of trades.

Sure they can, but are you saying there is no difference between the guy playing guitar at the local subway stop and Eddie Van Halen?

Design is a skill just like programming is a skill. To suggest that everyone can be equally talented in a particular element is to demean the trade and the people in it.

Re: Stefano’s Linotype: Why Programmers Suck at CSS Design (CSS Guide)

#22

Post by run4yourlives »

orib wrote: post #20
run4yourlives wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, if you use a user style sheet with !important you can keep your precious font sizes just the way you want them. The rest of us want a webpage that is pleasing to look at.

What part of respecting a user's settings makes a website ugly? If a website is properly designed, it should scale just fine no matter what the font size is. If you need a fixed pixel size for a font to make your design work, you're doing it wrong. And to top it off, a fixed pixel size requirement means it'll break anyways on different systems with different fonts, kerning and hinting options, and other settings.b

The part when user become users.

When you get right down to it, by the time you've accounted for every little preference you're asking websites to be text files, which kinda defeats the whole purpose of design.

Re: Stefano’s Linotype: Why Programmers Suck at CSS Design (CSS Guide)

#24

Post by wensing »

run4yourlives wrote: post #21
aristus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any halfway intelligent human being can teach themselves a very wide variety of trades. Are you saying you are not intelligent? Or just lazy? If you practice a bit and learn some simple rules of composition, typesetting, and color, you can be a competent designer. Beyond that level you need native talent and drive but there is no excuse to be ignorant about related fields.

Any halfway intelligent human being can teach themselves a very wide variety of trades. Sure they can, but are you saying there is no difference between the guy playing guitar at the local subway stop and Eddie Van Halen? Design is a skill just like programming is a skill. To suggest that everyone can be equally talented in a particular element is to demean the trade and the people in it.

To suggest that everyone can be equally talented in a particular element is to demean the trade and the people in it.

Maybe. But I would argue that most people's talent is the result of persistent hard work in that discipline. And that is a compliment.

Sometimes people use "I'm not a designer" as an excuse for why they aren't good at design, as if it's something you need to be born with. It could be that they've just never cared enough to try, but to make themselves feel better they dismiss it as an impossibility.

When you're looking far up the ladder it's tempting to call it a gift at birth--when you're only a notch below, it's easier to see it as the result of hard work. What drives those people is another question.

Re: Stefano’s Linotype: Why Programmers Suck at CSS Design (CSS Guide)

#25

Post by LogicHoleFlaw »

kwamenum86 wrote: post #2

When I read the title I was prepared to disagree but after reading the article I am convinced there is a lot I don't know about design. Good stuff.

Wow. I've always had an appreciation for good design, and a good "feel" for what would look good, but never knew how to approach the creation of a good one. This is exactly what I needed. Fantastic.

Re: Stefano’s Linotype: Why Programmers Suck at CSS Design (CSS Guide)

#26

Post by LogicHoleFlaw »

tjpick wrote: post #7
kwamenum86 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with using dummy text? How else can you ensure that as the content expands the page will not break?

It's ok, but I find it too "sunny day" to really be meaningful. You end up thinking your site looks awesome, and then when you get real, quirky, half filled in, random content in there the site looks broken anyway. You're better off to get some real content in there first and then design around that.

The article recommends using Wikipedia articles if you're not happy with lorem ipsum. That is actually a great idea to me.

Re: Stefano’s Linotype: Why Programmers Suck at CSS Design (CSS Guide)

#27

Post by gnaritas »

run4yourlives wrote: post #11
orib wrote: post #8

From the article: My suggestion for you is to do the following: start your CSS stylesheet with html { font-size: 62.5%; } NO, NO, AND NO! I set my font size to what it is for a reason. Web designers need to learn to deal with it. If you're manually tweaking font sizes, you're doing it wrong. Please, leave them at the default values; they're that way for a reason. I want a website that doesn't cause eye strain. Make s…

You know, if you use a user style sheet with !important you can keep your precious font sizes just the way you want them. The rest of us want a webpage that is pleasing to look at.

> The rest of us want a webpage that is pleasing to look at.

The default font size is pleasing to look at, that's why it's the default size. You kids need to get over the idea that everyone loves squinting at tiny fonts, they don't.

Re: Stefano’s Linotype: Why Programmers Suck at CSS Design (CSS Guide)

#28

Post by hassing »

run4yourlives wrote: post #13

I think the first bit is overly complicated. For example, the first @import statement loads a good chunk of code from a third party site for no good reason, really. A simple * {border:0; padding:0; margin:0;} will suffice for most sites. The rest of the article is excellent, and the way he handles IE is by far the best way to do things, avoiding corrupting your css with mishmash and hacks. A great resource.

If the site contains any sort of CMS or code generated html then don't remove padding and margin with a wildcard (unless you plan to specifying it manually for every tag).

Some things are supposed to have margin and padding.

Re: Stefano’s Linotype: Why Programmers Suck at CSS Design (CSS Guide)

#29

Post by greyhat »

Hmm, what is 'CSS Design' exactly?

This guy seems to be conflating design, which has principles that apply to newspapers, magazines, billboards, interactive kiosks, and web sites, with CSS, one specific technology for implementing your website's style.

No one should be worried about specific technical flaws in IE6's implementation of CSS at the same time they are worrying about how much white space they want to use in their design, whether to use a 2 or 3 column layout.

This article might have some good information here or there, but I'm not sure it is conceptually laid out well. This leads it to read more like "10 steps to a sweet web page!!!" than an introduction to design for the web.

My somewhat unoriginal advice: Read about design, decide how you want your page to look based on its contents, sketch it out, pick some colors, and THEN worry about translating it to XHTML/CSS.

Re: Stefano’s Linotype: Why Programmers Suck at CSS Design (CSS Guide)

#30

Post by run4yourlives »

hassing wrote: post #28
run4yourlives wrote: post #13

I think the first bit is overly complicated. For example, the first @import statement loads a good chunk of code from a third party site for no good reason, really. A simple * {border:0; padding:0; margin:0;} will suffice for most sites. The rest of the article is excellent, and the way he handles IE is by far the best way to do things, avoiding corrupting your css with mishmash and hacks. A great resource.

If the site contains any sort of CMS or code generated html then don't remove padding and margin with a wildcard (unless you plan to specifying it manually for every tag). Some things are supposed to have margin and padding.

(unless you plan to specifying it manually for every tag)

That's exactly what you would do. Knowing that everything has no padding and margin can sometimes make life a lot easier than trying to hunt down phantom default padding and how each browser displays it.

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