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CSS for the LDP?
Saqib Ali asks: "Over at The Linux Documentation Project there is a lengthy discussion going on about whether to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to improve the presentation of the documents. I support the use of CSS to improve the image/formatting of the document, and improve readability. I understand that content is more important than the presentation, but it can't hurt to improve both. There are others who think we should not get involved the presentation layer, and mainly concentrate on the content. Since, most Slashdot readers are Linux users, and might have visited the LDP once or twice, I would like to poll them on what they think about implementing and using nice CSS for the documents on the Linux Document Project website. I've written a CSS for this purpose that is available here, and some sample documents available in this weblog. Any thoughts? Any pros and cons on using CSS to improve presentation?"
Error: Acronym overload! Danger, Will Robinson! Danger! Jesus christ.
Translations:
Cascading Style Sheets-Uniform visual format for web pages.
LDP-Linux Documentation Project: Produce documentation for linux. Quite helpful.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
Of course they should use CSS to make the pages look better.
Unfortunately, CSS won't solve the root of the problem: non-semantic HTML. I've re-done several sites to make use of the so-called semantic HTML tags (em, strong, etc.) and to get rid of nasty table-abusing layout tags. CSS is necessary to make this transition, but readability on non-desktop browsers (phones, terminals) can only really be improved by switching to layouts using semantic HTML tags and divs for layout.
One last point I'd like to get out there is that there are many console browsers (links, w3m, but NOT lynx) that do a fine job displaying abused table layouts. Unfortunately, the console usually has so few columns that everything just ends up looking squished, while as my div-layout pages are easy to read.
True story.
I dont know about most, but i'd say definitly a high percentage. If your going by access statistics, most browsers masquerade as IE to trick broken IE only sites. I'm using Opera Right now (on windows however) but its set to identifie as MSIE 6. I'm sure the linux and mac versions do the same thing. I think Moz can do that to, although it may require an extension.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I tried Linux (Coyote, Red Hat 4, Red Hat 5, Gentoo, Mandrake 7, Red Hat 7, Mandrake 8) but it just never grabbed me. I switched my firewall from Coyote to OpenBSD and liked it so much I now use it for my server, too. I still use Windows on my workstation because I need it for games and it's just easier to stick with it for everyday things than to multi-boot. If I ever get the money I may try VMWare, but it won't be to run Linux on my Windows PCs, it will be to run BSD. I really agree with the statementn "Linux is for people who hate Microsoft; BSD is for people who love UNIX."
Yeah, I know BSD is dead, but I'm a zombie so I don't care :-P
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
The question shows a profound mis-understanding of CSS.
If anything, CSS reduces the effort on style in LDP, not increases.
CSS would be just one line,
<link href="ldpstyle.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
Thats it. And that could be put in by php elsewhere. Heck, you could even exclude it alltogether and let people set their own style.
the pages could then concentrate purely on content. Don't say font/i/b if its not needed, use pre/tt/em/strong tags. e.g content, not style (pre formatted, typewriter, emphasized, strong text).
Don't use tables, if it isn't a table you are describing. use div's (and class=..., ok one more css usage, but not required).
I can't tell you the number of times I have been annoyed when someone writing a webpage assumed style tags like font (+size, -size) should be used, it makes a blind assumption about the viewer of the page, their resolution, fonts available etc. Far better to use CSS, and avoid any style at all in your content, just use a separate, includable css page for the style.
Far too many pages on the web use content related tags to do style (table) and style related tags to do content (b, i, font=courier). I for one would be thrilled to see CSS used in LDP to reduce this horror.
How about this and this?
You can see in gentoo's website that they have a very nice consistency in their documentation, it really helps the human eye find what's needed among all data, so Im all for it
you go ldp!
even a stylesheet that's half as good as some of that stuff would make the ldp a whole lot nicer...
personally i think css is the best and easiest way to do a really good job on web site design...
tables are the devil, as are frames.. remember that and you're set
www.psychiatry.com is a nice basic layout done by my brother, and it mostly comes down to easy to see, easy to read, easy to change to your taste
And, no, I should not have used the goddamn Preview mode first.
alistapart did complete transformation to css for slashdot a while back and I know there are some other efforts. noone bothers to send in patches to the slashcode people though. There needs to be a go between to coordinate between the webdesigners and the coders.
Lack of standards??? Have you ever heard of the W3C?! There is a standard. Learn it. Use it. Prof it. *chortle*
Seriously. If CSS1 is used exclusivly, and linked to the pages using @import, there should be no problems at all
If bad puns were like deli meat, this would be the wurst
No, this is an incorrect view. CSS is about separating CONTENT and PRESENTATION. That means no font, bold, or italic tags. This is all done in the style sheet. Additionally, font tags, etc always take precidence over style sheets.
By using proper XHTML (or HTML 4.0) and sticking to valid tags (heading tags, emphasis, lists) the page will automatically degrade nicely and be viewable in ALL BROWSERS. This includes lynx and other text only browsers.
The browsers that support CSS will use it, and it will look prettier for them, and browsers that do not support it will still display the content perfectly even though fonts, etc could be wrong.
Also note that by using CSS, the site will be easier to maintain. The removal of font, bold, italic, and underline tags will also make the site lighter and faster. Note that CSS is cached by the browser, so that file only has to be downloaded once.
Please look at The CSS Vault and CSS Zen Garden as great examples and references. CSS Vault has page after page that justify the use of CSS and valid XHTML. Also notice that if the browser cannot use CSS, the site still renders all the content properly.
An important additonal note: By using proper XHTML and CSS, the disabled will have access to the site in a much easier fashion due to the lack of tables being used for markup (tables only for data!), and the simpler code. This is for special screen reading browsers.
"BEHOLD, CORN!!" - Dr. Weird, ATHF
this is flamebait, but i'll reply just for the record. MS IE is not CSS compliant despite what MS says. the designs in those pages look beautiful in my galeon window, and i lose no content.
ato
This is actually untrue, because the HTML requires markup to distinguish elements that you apply styles to. If you decide you want to emphasise a word in a run of text, for example, you need to put that word into a span or some other element. So while you can divorce presentation to a degree, presentation changes can require semantic changes to the content itself.
Actually, this is true. Tags such as EM (emphasis), and STRONG (strong emphasis) are used to emphasize important points. These are considered content, not style. Span's are not needed when the correct tags are used.
"BEHOLD, CORN!!" - Dr. Weird, ATHF
In all fairness, when it debuted, Internet Explorer for OS 9 was the most standards compliant browser on the web. It still does a pretty decent job. The trouble is that it's a dead browser, and will do an increasingly poor job at rendering the web, as web developers start using more advanced CSS techniques.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
Ahem. This is completely silly. Well structured documents--a prerequisite for good CSS--degrade *better* in browsers like Lynx because the underlying tag structure reflects the logical document structure.
Why would anybody do that? Modern browsers like Firefox are actually zippier, even on older hardware, than Netscape 4.xyz. A designer should think about how to make the page degrade because many of the browsers you mentioned choke on some CSS. But there are lots of tricks for hiding the CSS from those browsers, and if you do, then the user still gets a nice, logically structured document.
Anyway, CSS isn't all that hard to do right. I just did a site that looks really nice and polished and works in every browser (IE, Moz, Firefox, Safari, Camino, Konq, Opera, Lynx) on tons of platforms (Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, Linux, OS X, OS 9)...and it worked on the first try -- I didn't have to change a single thing (rsvp.uchicago.edu). I tested it on all possible combinations of those I could think of and it looked nice (and in the way I expected) on all of them.
Finally, I can't imagine a situation, except using minimal HTML 4, which would be silly, because it'd practically be XHTML at that point, where it would be heavier that the XHTML/CSS equivalent. Even if the stylesheet is relatively large, say 300-400 lines (I'm pushing 500 on a site I'm working on), it typically downloads once and then gets cached, at which point all subsequent pages that use that stylesheet will only download the nicely structured document.
Online citizen journalism from the inner city: The View From The Ground
There are 10 kinds of people: ones who understand ternary, ones who don't, and ones who think this joke is about binary
I think you should use CSS to separate content and presentation.
One of advantage of CSS is reduce your HTML code size, therefore it reduce your traffic network as well. This is possible because, the CSS file is only loaded once to client and store in the computer and the browser will use the same CSS file to present the other HTML file.
Other is, improve readability or your code for the search engine spider.
Obviously content is the most important thing
.02
Well, I will tend to disagree here. I'd say that the content is necessary. And for this project to succeed, it will need to have a lot more than just raw, uncut content.
Some content are so ugly that no one would read them. And it is not a new tendency to overlook the presentation, as if it was secondary. That's probably one aspect where Microsoft widely dominates everything else, OSS included.
My
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Um...in fairness, the grandparent post was talking about IE5 for Mac. Seeing as how MS has abandoned IE for the Mac at that version...there isn't really any Microsoft alternative he can upgrade TO.
And yes, even the most recent version of IE for windows STILL does not handle CSS fully or appropriately in all cases. To wit -- if it were, why would this project exist?
I would say that that was the design of that site, not something fundamentally wrong with CSS.
A light, simple, standards-compliant CSS sheet can render well in 98% of the browsers and add quite a bit to readability.
I am surprised there is this much debate around such a simple thing. CSS can save bandwidth and development time and add quite a bit to user experience. Yes, use it.
Perhaps I should have read the LDP website first. It appears that they insist that all documentation be submitted in XML or SGML DocBook formats. They even have a group of volunteers to help with that if the author is not able to provide DocBook.
A quick perusal of CPAN revealed eight modules specifically for dealing with DocBook. No doubt other languages have similar libraries.
Looks to me like more than half the work is already done. It shouldn't be a difficult matter to create a script to run the DocBook -> HTML+CSS conversions with predictable results.
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
As a logged in user, you can select a version of /. made specifically for cases such as yours. I use it even to keep the formatting issues from cropping up in firefox and, after a few days, you grow quite attached to the lighter format. Go to preferences -> homepage -> check 'Light' -> profit!
Of course, you could force IE to support CSS for your site...
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They already write it in DocBook, dumb-dumb. ;-)
The question which is being asked, is when you convert it to HTML, should it be plain old boring HTML, or should it use CSS? IMO it should use CSS since the stylesheet for converting DocBook to HTML would be simpler.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
IE mac has problems with some specific elements of css, mainy positioning elements. However, these are not so hard to avoid, even when one wants to build a page formatted entirely with css - I know, because I like to make sure most of my designs work cross-browser.
Really, it doesn't matter. Either that browser can be abandoned, or decent code can be written that works on it. If the rest of us want more complex formatting, we can change to a different stylesheet.
In any case, it seems that the version of slashdot rebuild with CSS works fine for me in IE 5.2 for mac. So it's a bit of a moot point then, no?
CSS makes pages more accessible from lynx. So, yes.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
The paragraph should be marked up with the lang attribute.
The paragraph(s) with forign languages could then be styled with CSS by selecting paragraphs with the lang attribute (and even based on the value of that attribute, different styles could be applied to different languages).
See here.
Because firefox preloads all of the styles referenced. I'm not sure if this is a bug or intended but it causes massive bandwidth, especially with sites like this that have complex graphics for each style.
Come on. I went to the LDP website, and clicked on HOWTOs. I scrolled down, and there was the link to the plain text versions.
I wouldn't describe one click away from the homepage to be "difficult to find".
IE5 Mac has some serious issues, but it's much more CSS-compliant than IE5 or 5.5 on a PC. It's close to IE6 in terms of support. It just has some real problems with inheritance and floats.
go through the effort for the very miniscule pay-off that comes from it.
The pay off is more than miniscule. Read the ESPN Redesign and see that they saved 50 KB per page and an estimated 730 Terabytes of bandwidth a year.
That is a HUGE cost savings. /. would likely have a similar cost savings due to the high traffic and the sheer number of nested tables on the site. I don't know how much ESPN's bandwidth and hosting costs are per GB, but they save on space and bandwidth. Estimating $5 per GB would put it at $365,000 per year in savings, but I bet it is even higher than that.
"BEHOLD, CORN!!" - Dr. Weird, ATHF
Do not use @import for something like this. It diminishes the End User's ability to override the default stylesheet with their own. This is necessary for those of us with poor eye sight and colorblindness. Linked stylesheets can be switched, but @import styles are only removed when all CSS are removed.