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

Post by elai » Tue, Oct 28, 2008, 6:39 PM UTC

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.

Post by orib » Tue, Oct 28, 2008, 6:50 PM UTC

cschneid wrote: post #10

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…

But, since it then allows the developer to use em measurements everywhere, doesn't that allow your override font size to look better on the page?

Post by orib » Tue, Oct 28, 2008, 7:05 PM UTC

avinashv wrote: post #34

orib wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could simply use em measurements everywhere before. Actually, the size of an 'em' isn't even defined relative to the size of a pixel by the CSS spec, so the claim in the article is dead wrong about it helping you use em when you mean 10 pixels. 62.5% of an unknown value isn't 10 pixels.

Not quite--what you are doing is setting the font-size, and hence the 'em' to 10px. px and em are both independently relative to the font-size. There is nothing about the size of a pixel mentioned here. It would also be very naive to argue that working in units of 10 is not much, much more convenient than working in units of 16.

Post by astine » Tue, Oct 28, 2008, 10:09 PM UTC

greyhat wrote: post #29

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 i…

Post by greyhat » Tue, Oct 28, 2008, 11:57 PM UTC

astine wrote: post #37

greyhat wrote: post #29

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 i…

Any artist in any medium will tell you that trying to abstract design from the materials you will work with is a bad idea. It's been recognized since the time of the Greeks that your materials will dictate largely what comes out and if you don't take an organic approach, your design will feel forced. The is true for HTML/CSS as for stone and paint. Knowing what your tags are capable of is as important as knowing what…