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A Deeper Look at CSS
internet, software development
January 07, 2004, 02:37 PM
I've been working hard on my new website design, which is why posting new entries has been so slow of late. Rest assured that I have many things lying around that still need saying, however. The well of my verbosity is far from dry.
I did want to offer a few words of apology to the CSS standard, which I have maligned somewhat in the past. CSS's attention to logical page elements and their properties makes it much easier to work with (and get good results out of) than the standard approach of mucking around with using tables as layout guides. There are still some important things missing from the current CSS standards (I spent all last night trying to get rounded borders on some of my divs, and wound up resorting to tables) but on the whole it's a reasonably well-crafted document formatting metaphor.
That said, there's still two major obstacles that are real showstoppers:
- Lack of a consistent, correct implementation of CSS in the most common web browser. You wouldn't believe the ugly hacks people have to come up with to get even some pretty simple things to work using CSS in IE.
- No usable CSS-based authoring environment. It's still easier to create a non-CSS page in Dreamweaver than it is to create a CSS page. And no editor has arisen with a sufficiently usable alternative to get people to switch.
The standard's getting better, though, and hopefully the browsers will catch up with it. But until the perfect solution is crafted, here's some advice on switching to CSS for those who just want to get it done:
- Make a mockup of the page design before trying an HTML/CSS implementation. You'll need the mockup to identify the main logical sections of the document that will need to be styled separately, and thus need to be different classes. I was really glad I had mine handy.
- Don't be afraid to go back to tables for some elements, if it won't interfere with your technical design goals. The semantic markup people would shake their heads at this, but unless you really need a semantically clean document, it's foolish to waste time hacking the CSS to work on buggy browsers or support features it doesn't yet. It's good to have a clear idea of what you're using CSS for, so you can make intelligent decisions about these things.
- As always, when problems arise, Google is your friend. Chances are someone else has had the same problem. Google around and the solution is probably just a few mouse clicks away.
- But a human friend is still even better! Without Dave's advice, this effort would have taken way longer. If you don't already have a friend who is familiar with the ins and outs of CSS, make one.
Now that I've got the main document structures nailed down (so hopefully the worst is behind me) I'm glad I made the switch. I'm excited about the new design; it's getting difficult for me to use the old site now that I know something better is just around the corner.
Email Rob:
The Case of Powerpoint
design, information
January 06, 2004, 12:02 AM
Kevin has a nice summary of several of the Powerpoint-is-bad memes that are out there on the internet. Going over these again got me thinking about how one cause of this problem might not be any particular design flaw of Powerpoint's, but rather an extension of the tool into areas it was never meant to enter. Powerpoint is reasonably good at putting together visual aids for lectures and talks, and as long as it's kept to that purpose it tends to shine (Neema, who is an ardent defender of Powerpoint, proved this with his excellent presentation, "A Spiritual Journey", on his 9-month adventure across Europe/Asia/Africa). The problem arises when people use Powerpoint as their sole venue for information presentation. As Tufte points out, the slideshow format is inappropriate for many communication purposes.
However, there are many who use Powerpoint not only as a means of presenting visuals for a talk, but also as a way of publishing take-away materials for the audience and even for storing databases of information so that it can be quickly pulled together into a presentation format. On the one hand, this is a perfectly reasonable strategy for busy people who don't have the time to maintain their information in a more appropriate tool, then convert all the relevant bits into Powerpoint slides. On the other, this leads to all the problems Tufte rails against for the reasons he defends far more eloquently than I can hope to do here.
Perhaps the answer lies in developing tools that support more robust single-sourcing techniques, both for authoring and publication. Such tools should not only make it easy to store content generically and squish it into a variety of presentation templates, but should afford using the appropriate templates for each information presentation purpose. But who will provide us with a vision of what such a tool might look like? It'd be an interesting challenge to take on.
Email Rob:
Posted by Dave on January 08, 2004 at 10:37 PM
Yeah! I got the Rob cred. I am on a high baby...