Slashdot Mirror
Dvorak Rants on CSS
John Dvorak writes on CSS after working on redesigning his weblog, the article ended up being extremely funny. From the write-up:
As we move into the age of Vista, multimedia's domination on the desktop, and Web sites controlled by cascading style sheets running under improved browsers, when will someone wake up and figure out that none of this stuff works at all?!
I can't believe the guy is still writing. The only reason I ever browsed through PcMag back in the bookstore days was to catch his commentary -- to me he was still the first real tech comedy print blogger before the term was coined.
I have to agree with him here 100%. Back in my SysOp days running a multinode BBS, I remember the hassles of the design interface -- we had 80 x 25 characters to use and we had (at most!) 2.4K/s download speed. Any remember using TheDraw to animate ANSI? What fun those days were.
All those hours and hours of editing in edlin and then TheDraw and then the RipTerm editor were always a big hassle, but today's multimedia standards are absolutely horrible. Once something finally gets to the ideal stage, it is replaced by something new that doesn't work well. CSS is probably the worst "standard" ever created in terms of design -- the idea is great but I'm starting to see that "freely created" standards are more and more garbage, no matter what the ubergeek thinks.
I'm in the process of starting our CSS layout from scratch for all of our blogs (I hired one graphic designer and have 2 more volunteers). We've spent 40 hours in the last week testing a few ideas on a variety of browsers and they're a mess. I think I should go back to the days of plain-jane HTML and just deal with it, but many people are becoming comfortable with the whole Web 2.0 interface and it is almost expected. I can accept that, but it seems that CSS does more harm than good, especially with the massive number of browsers out there. I really think we should consider each browser application and each version number as a totally seperate entity. I have to keep an entire set of different installs of various browsers (when possible) just to test all the different versions.
I'm a pro-market kind of guy, so I can accept these stumbling blocks because I do know that it is better for the market to have all the competition, buggy or not. Many standards do work eventually, but they have to be replaced because something new was released that everyone wants. I look at Flash (which was mostly proprietary for a long time) and I was much more luckier in designing a flash interfaced site (in terms of compability over the long haul) than I have been with any of the public standards.
I'm wondering: is the future not a public standard but a mess of proprietary ones that may work better, even if they require plug-ins and additional software to work? Standards bodies have NO REASON to try to make something work in even one platform -- they can blame the developer of the platform for the mess. Proprietary formats, on the other hand, often times will see any bugs being blamed on the developer of the format, not the developer of the platform using the format. When Flash first came out, the great majority of problems we had were always blamed on Macromedia, not on IE or Netscape. While I'm not saying this is necessarily an area that competition (of relatively proprietary standards) is the best for the short term, it might be for the long term. Who is competing against CSS in terms of proprietary standards for basic text and graphic layout? Will HTML be replaced by a variety of other formats that require some other application to be bought to create them?
(FWIW, I know that making a good CSS means documenting and comments everywhere -- even when that is done properly there still seem to be a ton of problems across the various platforms. I also have spent time on csszengarden.com for some insight in overcoming the problems).
Dvorak is waiting for DPSS.
Ever since we began using CSS for handling the visuals on our reporting platform we've had a much easier time making a big splash with clients. In the past just giving a new look and feel was all that was needed to appease the vast majority of clients; in spite of the data shown being exactly the same. Sure CSS requires effort, and as I read through the W3C's documentation I don't see them make the claim that CSS is necessarily easy on its own. Instead, the combination of tools (HTML and CSS) make presentation easier to update and shape.
DPSS (Designer Perceptive Style Sheets) should be ready in the next 50 to 100 years though. So, Mr. Dvorak, hold out just a bit longer and you can just think it, and it will be done.
Instead, Mr. D, rant about how the different browsers (IE6 rules!) failed to follow a published standard. The largest obstacles in web development are not the individual elements, but the containers. Having to do the same thing 3 different ways is obscene. On that, we agree.
My ZooLoo
The problem is not with the CSS standard, the problem is with implementations of that standard. IE has been on a different planet for years when it comes to implementing standards. It's kind of laugable that there's the "Microsoft CSS standard," then there's the real CSS standard.
Firefox does better, and unlike Microsoft, they're actually trying. (And making a damn good effort of it, IMHO, it's actually really close from what I can tell.)
I don't have much experience with Opera, but I haven't had much trouble with it when dealing with CSS.
Remember several years ago when several car manufacturers got busted for putting bad tires on new cars? No one argued that having tires on cars was a broken idea. The same is true in this case. Don't ditch CSS, just fix the friggin' browsers.
Besides, what exactly is the alternative? Putting style tags on each element? For one thing, you'll run into the same problems, and for another, I'm confused as to how that is easier than using CSS. Going back to tag-level formatting? No thanks. Frankly, that was a hideous idea when they came up with it the first time.
It was a nice rant, though, but misdirected.
Ah yes, material for years.
Dark Reflection
The only reason I use CSS is because color coordination does not run in my genes.
ha ha, noob.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Whycome when Dvorak troll he gets linked to and when I trolls I get modded down?
Dat jus not fair.
..Dvorak displays lack of understanding of issue he's ranting about.
Ok, this is actually a bit funny, but not in a humorous editorial column way. More of a sad "son hits dad in the groin with a baseball bat on 'Funniest Home Videos'" sort of way.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Solution: Start telling MSIE users to upgrade when they show up at your website, and if they don't, tell them to shove off. Yes, CSS standards are good. Firefox and Opera implement them a whole heck of a lot better than MSIE does. Okay, MSIE is catching up, but it's only one update followed by another 5 year span of stagnation. Users don't realize what a drag they're causing on web standards by sticking with such an old browser; it's time to help them feel the pain.
wtf does that imply? and wtf does it have to do with CSS? and wtf is this stuff that matters?
Cast:
...
John Dvorak: played by a angry, crying, screaming Horatio Sanz
Normal Human: played by you (unless you are John Dvorak)
Dvorak: CSS IS STUPID!! I CAN'T MAKE IT WORK SO IT SUCKS!!! STUPID STANDARDS BODIES!!! WHY DON'T THEY MAKE ALL THE BROWSERS WORK THE SAME?!?!? WHY!?!?!
Normal Human: Uhm, John. The standards bodies aren't in charge of the browsers. And lot's of people use CSS on sites that look practically identical on all the major browsers.
Bvorak: NO THEY DON'T. I CAN'T MAKE IT WORK, SO IT SUCKS!!!
Normal Human: Maybe if you bought a good book on CSS. Something by Eric Meyer...
DVORAK!: BUT IT CASCADES!!!
Normal Human: It's suppopsed to cascade. Just calm down.
DVORAK!!!: A BEAR ATE MY PARENTS!!!!
Normal Human:
DVORAK!?!?!: KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!
Normal Human: I hate you.
I say to Dvorak: Learn2Code. CSS is a pain in the ass, but it works pretty well if you have a vague notion of what you're doing and if you take the time to understand the cascading model. While we're at it, Dvorak is definitely not funny, and a submitter calling his articles funny just reeks of PC Mag employee.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
Oh, and there are of course the IE-specific CSS bugs to bear in mind too - http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer.html
throw new NoSignatureException();
...is almost what he seems to be implying between the lines here ("Another fine mess from the standards bodies."). As a professional web developer, I can tell you the biggest failing with CSS is IE's support (or lack thereof). The other browsers like Moz, Safari, Kong all get along fairly well so I'm assuming his problem is with IE.
The actual language and design behind CSS is really, really good; especially when compared to old table based HTML. Cleanliness, lack of duplication, ease of development, CSS offers a large boost in all of these areas. The implementation may have issues here, but the language and concept are sound. Browsers (especially IE) need to reform their ways, not reinvent CSS.
Yea I remember The Draw and RIP Script and Even RoboTech BBS own Graphical/FX which had a better one for many uses. But those advantages was most of the graphics were vecor based. HTML and CSS are Page Layout Based. With Tools like RIP Editor and ANSI tools like the Draw you were allowed to put things in X and Y locations. Not as much so with HTML/CSS Heck there is no way to Put a diagnal Line or a Circle on your HTML Page without using Graphics Picture, or getting some sort of plugin to the browser, I think there is a W3C Approved Vecor graphics but it is not widely used yet. Also back in the old days we had the luxery of knowing what resolution people were running in and their apps always ran full screen. Now we have resizeable window browsers and many many different screen resulutions. CSS was origionally designed so you can make all pages look consistant but it is forced into use because it gives more display options to your HTML that you cant do otherwise. Many people who use CSS use it just so they can change the color of their links when you move your mouse over it. It is not because it is better or easier or browser compatible it is just because there are more things you can do.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I find CSS to be a dream and much easier to work with than tables. More often than not, when people complain about CSS there are two main reasons:
a. Explorer (but you learn some work arounds)
b. They don't know what they're doing and are unwilling to learn (it's a paradigm shift as they say)
Of course, learning it from a good source makes all the difference.
I use CSS for layouts and for type (and for print.) It's a breeze. I recently had to do a quick update of an old site that used tables. It was a horrible, horrible experience. Fortunately, I've got the project to convert it using XHTML and CSS.
"Another fine mess from the standards bodies."
What? So, the reason why CSS renders differently on each browser is because of the standards bodies?
In other news: The POSIX standard is why Linux isn't the top operating system. The SQL standard is why every database works slightly differently (enough to trip you up). The 802.11a/b/g standards are why wireless can be a pain to set up...
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
"internets-most-successful-troll"
Thank you CmdrTaco. You just made my day.
If your Internet connection happens to lose a bit of CSS data, you get a mess on your screen.
When does that happen? When the web server times out because the CSS is too big to host out? Or when Dvorak's AOL connection kicks him off because his free 100 minutes has run out?
C'mon...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Now I get it, it's only a standard if Microsoft supports it.
John Dvorak was mildly amusing in the mid-80's when I first ran into his column. Back then he would italicize the important bits which was entertaining, but after a while it just became a bit too much. This is more of the same, only twenty years later.
John, CSS uses inheritance -- it's a pretty advanced idea that egghead nerds are fine with, so just deal with it. As an earlier post says, a much better use of your time would be to complain about why browsers don't display the same page the same way -- if you manage to say something nice about Firefox, all the better. I'd suggest a calm, thoughtful, witty approach to writing, but then you'd have to drop the italics as well -- and I don't think that's gonna happen. Oh well.
I'm waiting for a movie version of this on YouTube :)
"As most readers know, I'm a blogger."
That's like saying, "As most readers know, I am a computer operator."
CSS stands for Conspicuously Sketchy Sheets
Here's a tutorial John - http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Don't you know anything about the net? Obviously his tube got clogged ...
Come on, we've SEEN mySpace pages.
...is that there are only two standards, IE and everything else. I don't know what he's been doing but I've found exactly one difference in CSS layout between Opera and Firefox, and that was a fairly ambigious (but technically correct) code with an oversized image without size inside a CSS with fixed size. I think Opera actually did it correct making it overflow the CSS, while Firefox was kinder on the web developer scaling it to fit inside. Of course IE did something ten times stupider, it resized the CSS and fucked the entire page. And with all of them (except IE, that is) heading for ACID2 compliance they should be easier to work with than ever. But why oh why did CSS have to do away with the table functionality? 90% of all the ugly crap I've seen could have been fixed if CSS supported simple things like having a footer.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
From the article: "There actually are Web sites that mock this mess by showing the simplest CSS code and the differing results from the three main browsers and the Safari and Linux browsers." Does anyone have a link to these sorts of sites that he mentions?
In retrospect, I think it's the last thing he said that made any sense.
That which does not kill her only prolongs my agony.
Unsurprisingly there are a lot of 'omfg css is so easy, you are just doing it wrong' and 'its the implementers problem' type replies. While both these statements are true, they are missing the point.
CSS in principle is a good idea, and in practice, even in its current state, is a great improvement on the alternative, but the fact remains that in order to do a non trivial design that works across all in-use browsers it is going to take a lot of work. To do this in a standard way (without relying on browser quirks) takes more work still. Not particularly hard work, but can be very time consuming. Granted, this is the fault of the implementations, but that is a bit of a moot point to the person who has to spend the hours trying to remove a 1 pixel gap from the side on image in ie, without breaking the appearance in firefox.
As a professional web developer, I rarely am meet with issues that I have any difficultly understanding, the problems come when you design an elegant solution for a problem, implement 99% of it, then find some bug in one of the technologies used requires you to throw it all out and start again, rushing a ugly and hard to maintain solution in order to meet deadlines and avoid the broken bits. Experience help to avoid this, but when you multiply the amount of technologies typical in a web project (server, db, client side scripting, server side scripting, content (html), display (css)) etc. by the number of implementation that may be used for each one, factoring in the rate of change these technologies go through, it become impossible to be ready for all possible limitations/ errors in implementation.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
If your Internet connection happens to lose a bit of CSS data, you get a mess on your screen.
Oh come on, Dvorak, this does NOT happen. TCP/IP has checksum features, if packets come in corrupt or not at all, the server resends that packet. It's an integral feature of TCP/IP.
Dvorak is an idiot. I really should stop paying attention to him.
"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steve Wright
The 802.11a/b/g standards have nothing to do with the user interface of a wireless device.
The POSIX standard has nothing to do with Linux's position in the marketplace (mostly a UI, marketing, and inertia issue).
The SQL standard has nothing to do with why every database works slightly differently: it only attempts to set some rules on what they do the same.
Just as the CSS standard (and the standards body) has nothing to do with why browsers all render it differently. The standard defines how the browser should render - some browsers just ignore it.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
...That's what this idiot deserves; a person yelling "WAH!" right in his face as loud as possible. Why? Simple: he is just another idiot who has no clue as to what he is doing and has the audacity to complain about it.
Yes, CSS has its flaws, many if not most of which revolve around the lack of good support in the most popular browser, IE6. However, these challenges are actually quite easy deal with provided one has an intimate knowledge, of XHTML, CSS 2.1, and all those little quirks when designing your code to support multiple browsers.
What really makes me livid is the complaints about "deconstructing" already created style sheets. Why is this so difficult to do sometimes? That's quite simple: people generally don't spend time organizing and commenting their CSS. If you develop a site, and your CSS is well organized and well commented, then you won't have any questions about what the CSS is there for. Also, though I'm sure this is redundant his complaint about cascading is flat out stupid. Should I instead have to spend weeks specifying CSS for every nested object in a page, or even better, using inline markup on the page that if it were to need to be updated later would need to be updated on each and every page? Personally, I'll gladly deal with specificity than dealing with that kind of mess any day.
Sure, CSS has issues, but most of his frustration appears to stem from the fact that he really doesn't know much about CSS.
He's probably used to HTML. The Web exploded because HTML was easy and anybody could 'get it'. I taught my grandfather HTML over lunch on a sheet of paper in the late 90's. This was good for the web, despite how people bitch and moan about their refined aesthetic sensibilities being offended by amateur GeoCities pages.
Since then the programmers have taken over. HTML documents need to have an XML namespace declaration at the top that most mortals can't remember. The CSS inheritance model is nonsensical, I need a 2-page cheat-sheet to get the syntax right, its designer thinks declaring aliases are 'too complex' and it takes a bona fide css expert to get css positioning working across browsers with a design that survives user-preferred fonts.
I'll start worrying about all this when browsers stop rendering the transitional DTD styled with basic CSS and positioned with tables.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I'd follow Dvorak anywhere....out of morbid curiosity
But seriously, I RTFA and thought "well, he didn't say anything too stupid", until I saw the last comment about the standards body. I really do feel sorry for him.
"You're right, but this is one of the natural "phenomena" of the market -- no one wants to really follow anyone else's standards."
Basically, IE has about CSS2 20-30% coverage, while Konq, Opera, Safari (which is Konq), FireFox/Mozilla/Camino have between 70-90% CSS2 coverage. The second group ("standards compliant" I think I'll call them) have 95+% of CSS1 in, while IE has 40%. And IE also likes to do things Just A Bit Differently, ya know. MS doesn't seem inclined to follow the spec, but the other people have their shit together.
Now, since none of these are sold, and the marority are FOSS or Freeware, I fail to see the argument for market forces. This is not 1997, with two companies fighting to have their server software be dominant via browsers.
This post, and your other post, reveal flaws in your understanding that I think should be addressed. For the majority of your work, if you target standards compliant browers, you're golden. If you decide you must support IE, then you have to develop a second path for IE. If Safari or Konq is on the standards path and it misrenders something, no big deal. The intelligent users will file a bug. If something won't work on the IE path, it's also not a big deal. Just mention to the end-user that they can stop using the worst browser on the planet Earth to view webpages.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Makes me glad I decided never to rely on doing web pages for money...
I will stick with just running the network, if you dont mind.
...or maybe the inanity, your choice. He mentions Vista and CSS in the same sentence, and then focuses on CSS for a rant about things that don't work?
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Who the hell used edlin? Blackbeard was a full-screen editor with a very reasonable set of control codes to do things, though Turbo Pascal 3's editor was probably the best of the best for the time.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Yup, you are right. This is my kind of ugly!
Well I think we all know what he's talking about, but he just doesn't understand why it's happening.
He must be talking about the browser having an old version of the css file(s) cached, which can of course produce some "interesting" visuals. This can happen in most browsers, and anybody who's done design work has probably run into it a time or two. Forced refresh clears it right up.
http://csszengarden.com/ highlights some of the wonderful artistry you can do with CSS. Once people get a grasp of using CSS, going back the traditional table based layouts, and mixing content and style, is no longer an option; but CSS is far from easy to pick up. In fact initially using CSS is incredibly frustrating.
I've been writing code since I was 5 when my dad taught me Fortran. As a pre-teen, I learned BASIC. In high school, I learned C and Pascal. In college, I learned LISP, Ada, and C++. My "favorite" language right now, simply because I am having more fun with chip design, is Verilog. Suffice it to say that I have a lot of experience with programming and programming languages and quite radically different ways of thinking about encoding algorithms (software and hardware design are very different from each other).
Coding web pages makes me violently ill.
Back in 2003, I decided to learn web programming. In the process, I learned to hand-code HTML, CSS, Javascript, Java, SQL, and PHP. PHP, I can handle, because it's simple and straight-forward and designed to make back-end writing easy (although I understand that there have been some developments with Ruby since then). SQL makes sense, since it's specialized for database manipulation.
But when it comes to developing front-end web content, I just cannot justify using three different languages for one thing. I mean, I do understand the idea behind specializing languages (PHP vs. SQL), so in the abstract, I see a reason for making a separation between structure/content (HTML) and formatting (CSS). I just have a visceral reaction to having to use two different languages with two different syntaxes at once in this context. Embedding SQL in PHP doesn't bother me. For some reason, CSS and HTML bother me. I think it's because I feel like they're haphazzardly slapped together and FORCED to get along. PHP and SQL have no relation. Each is designed for its function. HTML evolved from a structural markup language into a total mess, and then CSS was invented as a bandaid. Along the way, no one ever thought to actually unify them. And then there's Javascript.
CSS, HTML, Javascript, and Java each has its own different name for each kind of DOM object. WTF!
If you want to do the full gamut of web front-end programming, you have to learn four names for every object or attribute!
What were these people thinking?
They weren't.
And it's never going to get better. 100 years from now, web programming will be tainted by the legacy evolutionary path everything went through.
Just wait for the Semantic Web. Yet another syntax to learn. No unification AT ALL.
I said they can figure it out. Not they are any good at it or have any design sense.
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
O, The Irony...
Well I think we all know what he's talking about, but he just doesn't understand why it's happening.
I recall in FF the old CSS would somtimes get corrupted but IIRC that was a flaw in FF, not a flaw in TCP/IP haha...
He's such a dumbass...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I'm currently enjoying the pleasure of converting message board software from (broken at that) HTML 4.01 with tables for layout, to XHTML 1.0 Strict using CSS entirely for styling and presentation. It's been a long work in progress (we're on about our 6th month of development work for this version, but XHTML/CSS isn't the only work being done, and we're all volunteers), but the change has been amazing. You wouldn't believe the increased speed at rendering pages, even for a Perl-based project. It's thrilling, actually. And of course we kept the tabular data (memberlist, calendar) in tables because it belongs in such.
Yes, our CSS file is huge now, but I can live with that.
Time Breakdown of Modern Web Design
It's when there's a hole in one of the tubes, all the CSS starts to leak out.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Standards are great. There's so many to choose from.
After ten years of cable and DSL, I am now getting my web through a combination of cell modem and satellite dish. And I can tell you that lost CSS data is something I deal with nearly every day.
IE6 has problems. In all fairness, CSS was here first.
barack to the future?
Informative!
There are other problems with flash, aside from the issues with low-user-base browsers. The biggest one for me is that it breaks the page metaphor.
You see, the whole point of the hyper-text machine language is that it lets you link content between sites in a consistent manner (that's why it's 'hyper-text'. Otherwise it would simply be 'formatted text with pictures'). Flash doesn't let you do that. Just imagine Amazon or eBay had a Flash interface and you'll see what I mean.
He had 500 bytes of html formatting tags and attributes in every , and that's the way he liked it.
The day they introduced CSS was the day it became a lot harder for me to read it - because most people who design websites (are idiots) who try make a WYSIWYG website and lock font sizes in small unreadable sizes - and MSIE (for once) follows standards and doesn't allow you to scale them.
But then most people are selfish, so shouldn't surprise.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
...noted. Thanks!
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
CSS has done a lot of good for the World Wide Web, despite the flaws in its implementation and design.
It's true that many webpages using CSS look different across web browsers. But things are certainly a lot better than they were a decade ago, when all we had was HTML and pages telling us "Best Viewed in Internet Explorer!" or "Best Viewed in Netscape." Today, websites are better formed, using CSS and a better defined HTML. They can be readable, customizable, and even versatile, when the right technologies are used (e.g., RSS).
But the Web isn't as simple as an operating system running applications specifically made for it. It's all about the acceptance of standards and implementing those standards across all platforms and media. Dvorak may not believe it, but we've come a long way in webpage development, and modern implementations of the Web's technologies are much better than they were ten years ago.
CSS isn't perfect, but it's done a good job of improving the Web, and it deserves a heck of a lot more credit than Dvorak believes.
If your Internet connection happens to lose a bit of CSS data, you get a mess on your screen.
Is that because one of the tubes has a leak?
If you want to complain, complain about Internet Explorer. Mozilla, Opera and (as far as I know) Safari all support the CSS table rendering model, which can do almost everything that HTML tables can. The main thing it lacks is support for colspan and rowspan, but for your average website layout (banner across the top and one or maybe two sidebars beside the content) you can get away without using either.
Of course, Internet Explorer only supports the bare minimum of the stuff in that chapter, and even then only when applied to HTML tables. Nor does Microsoft plan to support it in the near future. Most people don't even know that CSS can do table rendering because of Microsoft's lack of support, but the truth is that for all of CSS's warts, simple table-based layouts are actually right there in the CSS2 spec and will work just fine in every modern browser except Microsoft's.
I'ts not altogether clear that he knows what "cascade" means.
But, this is a feature that introduces considerable complexity for some questionable benefits. I think some kind of inheritance is a good thing, but cascading goes beyond. Perhaps somebody could explain to me why cascadingis better than having some kind of simpler stylesheet inheritance mechanism.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Ahem, "normal humans" want a wysiwyg editor and have nothing to do with frames or css.
Dvorak just needs to admit he was beaten (and a cheapskate), and pay the neighbor kid $20 to fix up his CSS for him. Gramps is getting too old for this "tech" thing.
body massage!
Baby Jesus cries :'-(
...but who is reaping all the benefits?
HCG 50a = 2MASX J11170638+5455016
11h17m06.4s +54d55m02s
I know this will cause several people to gag...
:)
Right now, one of the best WYSIWYG and code based CSS editors available is the new Microsoft Expression Web Designer. It is what our designers call, FrontPage, but with real standards and real power.
http://www.microsoft.com/expression
At least check out some of the demostration Videos if you have access to a Windows box. From what our tech and designers feedback, this product is not only about standards, but fully enforcing them, even if they break IE.
It can work with CSS in WYSIWYG mode with well done properly formatted coding. Also if you code by hand, the non-visual editor does the intellisense that many of us are use to in development IDEs.
From some of the demonstrations I have seen and the stuff our in house people have put out, it truly surprised the heck out of me, considering that it has a FrontPage heritage, which was about the opposite of what this product is about. Meaning that it adheres to standards and even forces developers to create well formed and compatible standards based XHTML and CSS.
So before you totally gag, it is worth taking a look at. And if you still gag, don't blame me, I don't profess it to be God's gift, but something that is free for now and quite respectible for ease of producing CSS and XHTML content without having to be a hard core standards nerd.
At the very least, MS may have some good ideas that some open source editors could learn from...
You fly into a foreign country, head to the first car rental agency (well, actually, the rental agency is government-owned and ubiquitous). The lady at the counter provides you, free-of-charge, a slightly musty, old, not-been-fixed-up-in-five-years vehicle. No apprehension on your part, look around and see a LOT of folks driving the same vehicle, right?
Head out to the lot, and stumble across another rental agency, who will give you a newer, shinier, standards-compliant car - still free-of-charge. Free! Do you tell that agency, "No thanks, I'll stick with this first clunker."?
That's the problem with Internet Explorer users, in my eyes. The refusal to upgrade, even when the upgrade is FREE. Free as in Firefox. Free as in Opera.
These same users then undermine the goals of CSS - establishing a standard for web formatting (am I right?). Also as a consequence, web designers must bend over backwards to include compatibilty with their clunky, five-year-old lemon (how many times have I seen, "Oh, and here's the IE fix for this effect"?).
More on point: Dvorak, the issue is NOT CSS - it's the browser.
Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try. ~Yoda
The poor souls that don't have their threshold at -1 will totally miss this humorous gem!
Bah!
His rant can be extended to the whole PC world in general. The infancy of the personal computer industry began in an atmosphere of "selling the dream" and never worrying that it couldn't be delivered... and has never grown up.
Computers with sixteen-slot S-100 busses that couldn't possibly drive sixteen cards.
The Apple ][ which had no fan. The first time I saw one, I said, "Wow! they must have brilliant thermal engineers." Then the owner explained that the reason why the cover was off was that if he put the cover on it would overheat and shut down. They didn't have brilliant thermal engineers: they didn't know that they needed thermal engineers.
I remember a guy who kept talking about how wonderful his North Star Advantage was. I asked him if it was reliable. He said, absolutely, he had had no problems with it whatsoever. So the next time I was in his office, I asked for a demo. "Oh, I can't," he said. "The power supply burned out last month." "But," I said, "I thought you said you hadn't had any problems with it." "I haven't had any problems with the computer," he said. "Just the power supply."
And that, in a nutshell, is the way the PC industry has been since its inception. CSS is just one of many examples. People tried to achieve consistent appearance with HTML, and couldn't because it wasn't designed for that and different browsers rendered it differently. So, they invented CSS, whose whole reason for existence is to allow Web pages to be written to a standard that will be rendered consistently by all browsers. And it doesn't really work, and nobody cares.
How about all those USB devices whose instructions tell you never to plug them into a hub?
How about all the CDs that burn and verify without error... and can then be read in about 95% of all CD readers?
How about all the Bluetooth thingies that won't interoperate properly with other Bluetooth thingies?
How about all the Windows releases, each of which is going to solve the security and usability problems of the previous releases?
It goes on and on... but it doesn't matter because nobody expects the stuff to work any more...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
From the article:
"""If your Internet connection happens to lose a bit of CSS data, you get a mess on your screen."""
I would assume if the internet lost a bit of your html, or jpg, or zip file you'd also get a big mess. Thanks for pointing out the obvious here.
Back in my day... we'd tie an onion to our belt, which was the style at the time.
I like the guy. He's a little wacky, sure. But he's smarter than most of you think. However, I haven't read him much since he was an OS/2 columnist. It's entirely possible you are all correct.
/. sure does promote a lot of his articles.
It's pretty ironic though, that all these people who hate him so much are driving his popularity far better than any fans do.
Most people don't even think inside the box.
There actually are Web sites that mock this mess by showing the simplest CSS code and the differing results from the three main browsers and the Safari and Linux browsers."
This sentence sums up his understanding of the material involved.
This marks the day Dvorak realized the same frustrations of myspace kids everywhere. Hell, he even wrote a blog complaining about it.
"Dear Diary,
I don't understand why CSS won't work on my site! OMG, all I want to do is make every div tag on my page 50% transparent, why does it slow things down so much?? Sometimes I think everyone's out to get me. In the end I ended up using Tom's myspace editor, but now I have a link to his page on my page and I don't know how to get rid of it. I hate my life.
-J.D."
if JD can't figure out that the *real* problem is msft trying to lock up the browser market by taking MASSIVE EFFORT to AVOID the css standard, then the guy is nothing more than a one eyed techie tool leading the blind wannabes.
it is implementation, stupid.
For styling (i.e. fonts, colors, background images, borders) CSS is OK. For layout - it's unusable in all but the simplest layouts. If you think otherwise, you haven't developed a webapp that needs to be localized into 8 languages. No, fixed width and positioning won't work in German with its mile-long words. And they may not work in Japanese because fons are larger. One thing that could save the day is combined dimensions. If I want the sidebar to be, say, 20em, there must be something that would tell the body to be 100% - borders, padding and margins - sidebar width, so that when webapp is localized into German and width of the sidebar is 25em I'd just need to change the width of the sidebar. Right now one has to resort to javascript which is fucked up.
It's people like this that keep me employed. :)
Dvorak seems to be missing the point:
"CSS's real benefit was that the layout not only could be changed easily but also could become dynamic: The content is stored in a database and presented as necessary, with instant updates. With dynamic content, it's possible for 100 people to go to the same Web site and get 100 different versions."
Wasn't it CGI, not CSS, that made dynamic content possible? CSS:
1) SEPERATES presentation from information, making all those cgi scrips a lot cleaner and easier to program
2) Pushes the processing of formatting client-side
Any CGI script can display 100 different non-css html pages to 100 different users.
Just because Dvorak can't figure out how float positioning works doesn't mean its a bad standard. CSS isn't perfect, but I don't see you coming up with anything better and getting all the browsers to support it (if imperfectly). I think the CSS that is consistently supported across browsers is far more impressive than the CSS that isn't is frustrating. In fact, I think we should have the W3C try to negotiate peace in the middle east as well.
And if you're still not happy with CSS, why don't you just output all of your web pages as XML and use XSLT for formatting. Then come back and tell me how complicated you think CSS is.
http://www.dangerouslyawesome.com/2006/07/19/why-j ohn-c-dvorak-bugs-me/
woooo....he's got me fired up today.
Anyone who has done more than look at CSS and come to the conclusion that support isnt concistent would also realise that there are ways to overcome almost ANY problem. I have overcome almost every "compatibility" obstacle i have come up against in XHTML & CSS, largely through the use of SIMPLE, DOCUMENTED methods that are freely available through the wonders of google. Stop bitching and use your brain. Just because every tom dick and harry can open FrontPage doesnt mean you should expect it to be a 30 second tutorial to learn the way browsers, css and xhtml work. You can open a japanese book just as quickly as you can open FrontPage, but you dont expect to learn in just by looking at the pages for 30 minutes, do you? Either learn how to do it or shut the fuck up and go find someone to wipe your ass for you.
What is...?
The parent post needs to be modded down. After all, this is a forum for serious discussion for important issues, rather than someplace for people to whine about other people's posts like this... wait a minute...
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
Now, about the simplicty that you speak of. It is great that HTML was easy to learn/teach. But it was also difficult and cumbersome to get intricate layouts as well. Also, I like that "normal" people were (and still are) able to publish content. However, when more than just basic styles, layouts, navigation are needed, then I don't think that ANY language will EVER be simple enough that "normal" people can sit down and throw a cohesive website together.
Most all browsers will still render documents that aren't correctly formatted. However the XML namespaces and correctly formatted XHTML will GREATLY reduce rendering time...and in some cases help in getting close to cross-browser compatibility (although not always the case). So again, if you want something done professionally that takes advantage of the advanced capabilities/techniques of web-design, then unless your grandfather is a HTML and CSS guru, then don't hire him to develop your website (or I guess even Dvorak for that matter).
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
For layout - it's unusable in all but the simplest layouts.
... I believe in the power of CSS, the good intentions of CSS ... but Tables make it so easy to make complex layouts right quick.
I agree -- I agree, I agree, I agree.
CSS layout is the problem child of web design. Three column as reasonable limit, four with care and compatibility issues. "Five is Right Out", as they say.
Damn! It's not that I want to love Tables
-kgj
-kgj
Besides the poor implmentation of the browser makers of the CSS standard, the standard itself has plenty of flaws or omissions. Even people with quite a bit of experience creating web pages have trouble using CSS for certain layouts, this speaks to the basics of CSS. No wonder people have been pissed off at the W3C, their standards are lacking and they can't get proper industry-wide implementation of them.
Once again, Dvorak is all about the griping but offers zero solutions (scrap the whole thing is not a real solution).
I would have more respect for the guy if he actually offered up some ideas for improvement.
One option might be for the W3C.org to grade the browsers on their support for CSS1, CSS2, CSS3. Issue a press release with those grades. Let folks know that IE6 received a D+ in supporting CSS2.
A public outcry "might" help.
I think it is interesting that tens (hundreds?) of thousands of website developers are forced to continually work-around the issues created by one or two browsers. It only encourages the browsers folks to not change (mostly MS). Maybe if a several thousand developers signed a public letter to MS that their IE 6 browser needs to address these top ten issues, they might be pressured to fix it. MS has fixed other issues under public pressure. But the more we all work around the issues, the less likely it will ever change.
btw.. I don't think any of that will happen because status quo is the most likely path.
Hire someone to do your web pages while you focus on learning enough about anything to
generate useful content (a problem more closely related though, by your own admission, not
directly related to your actual job.
I had no idea.
I'm fairly new to slashdot and didn't understand why you people ragged on Dvorak so often. I felt that you were being unfair.
Well, this article proves it. You were just being the jocks all along. Picking on the retarded kid. In this case, Unbelievably retarded kid.
That he finally picked a topic I can relate to must have helped today.
'tis but a scratch.
John Dvorak, San Francisco Examiner, February 1984
Dvorak: Visionary of the Future
Why should CSS run in your genes? Try diarhea. Now there is something that really runs in your jeans.
is to become a .NET developer and live happily ever after, of course. Except... not. The reason for all the languages and syntax is that the web grew up out of humanities desire to communicate. There is no one company that delivered the Internet as we know it. If you look at the history of any of the languages you mention you will find your answer as to why things are as they are. JavaScript came from Netscape and was originaly called LiveWire. It was a radicaly new web language that would give developers the tools to add client side processing to websites. Problem was that very few web developers at the time were actually programmers. They were most likely either DIY hobbiests or corporate lackies who sleezed their way into an easy paycheck by becoming the "web guy". So it rotted in the background until, hey, AJAX everybody!
HTML came out of SGML and the academic community. It was designed to deliver, get this, text _and_ images in the same document on the Internet! So cool! People were supposed to write their web pages in a text editor and then PUT their documents on the webserver. But PUT was not secure or powerful enough so enter webdav.
CSS is great! I have no complaints about the CSS/HTML dicotamy. And things will only get better with time. The problem with CSS is Internet Explorer. But I'm not going to beat that horse.
The web came so fast, and so many people were thinking about it that it produced an explosion of technologies, each trying to deliver something new. Now days we are sorting it all out, keeping whats good and letting the bad fade.
It's only been 15 years of the web. Can you imagine the world without it? I'd say things are pretty good.
Kind Regards
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
Why was that supposed to be funny?
Are we all hating John Dvorak now? Because I guess i didn't get that memo.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
why exactly is anyone listening to anything that dvorak writes anymore. Any time his editorials appear on /. or digg I read out of curiosity and am always appalled by the backwardness and technological neandralathism of this guy. I think he long ago lost touch with the community he writes about.
Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
As usual, the tech elite bashes the head of anyone who voices displeasure with our precious "standards". Anyone who has trouble with CSS must be a moron, because we are all brilliant and we have no problems using it!
What a load.
Everyone who does any serious web development knows DAMN well that CSS is a pain in the butt to make work properly. When it comes down to it, neither HTML or CSS are intuitive or particularly productive toolsets for creating modern websites. Of course we're stuck with it for now, but that doesn't mean it's the vest way to do things. So don't come off as all high and mighty. Just because you've managed to master a flawed system, doesn't mean it's not a flawed system. Nor are you a freaking genious.
I think Dvorak has a right to expect more. I mean, let's take this to extremes; Could you imagine writing a newsletter directly in Postscript or PCL, and then having every single printer print it differently? That's basically where we stand with HTML/CSS and the current browser situation.
As a full time web developer, I look forward to the day when I can lay out my templates 100% graphically, and know that the resulting code will render perfectly on every machine that views my site.
How about this: All browsers must support CSS1 completely and CSS 2.1's positioning at least.
Or what?
"Or I'll say, 'All browsers must support CSS1 completely and CSS 2.1's positioning at least' again!"
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
"Meanwhile, this article is basically Dvorak saying, "Man. Programming is HARD. It has to be a problem with the language.""
I'm not certain why you're laughing?
Could someone tell me why when this guy speaks he gets on /., but when I speak, I get modded 2 Funny? It is because my last name isn't cool enough?
One day the toilets of the world will rise up... And I'm going to nuke them.
I shouldn't have to know anything to make a program either right? Compilers should just figure out what I want and generate it for me. Why the hell do I have to go to school and learn engineering to design cars, this is bullshit. I should just be able to get out the box of crayolas and draw a cool car. News flash, you have to learn how to do something if you want to do it. Boo fucking hoo.
The troubles you are experiencing are not CSS problems, per se, but rather piss-poor browser implementations of CSS. If browsers followed the specs, you'd probably eliminate 99% of the issues right off the bat.
You have given the default excuse for what is the reality of devloping using "web standards" (meaning, using CSS for layout).
Your excuse collapses in a heap when you are faced with the cold, hard fact that There will never, ever, ever be 100% compliance among browsers for CSS. NEVER! In fact, I would be stunned if you even got 10% compliance. Pigs will soar through frozen hell before that happens.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Instead, Mr. D, rant about how the different browsers (IE6 rules!) failed to follow a published standard.
Dvorak (to Microsoft): "Make your broswer CSS-compliant."
Microsoft: "What's in it for us to do that?"
Dvorak: <deer-in-headlights look>
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
The problem is not with the CSS standard, the problem is with implementations of that standard.
I get so sick of hearing this excuse.
I use hybrid designs in my web pages. CSS control fonts and other such sugar, whereas tables control the to-the-pixel designs churned out by our designers. I use nested tables with aplomb.
Then the CSS zealots lambaste, insult, condemn, and mock me for this horrible (yet completely FUNCTIONAL) choice. Okay, fine. So I dive into CSS positioning and experience what can, at best, be described as retarded, goat-blowingly horrible hell. Honestly, CSS positioning is "programmer-friendly" in much the same way that a hot, acid-spewing, rusty circular saw is "penis-friendly".
So I deign complain about the state of CSS programming, and the zealots reply: "That's not CSS's fault. It's the browser makers' fault for not following the standard." (If they're not following it, then it is not a "standard".) What goes unsaid after the excuse is, "Enjoy your neverending buffet of barely-debuggable CSS hacks for the rest of your career!"
No, thanks. Actually, scratch the "thanks" and make do with the with the "No!" I use tables for layout, CSS for sugar. And that's that.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
CSS is a pain in the ass, but it works pretty well if you have a vague notion of what you're doing and if you take the time to understand the cascading model.
I agree with the "CSS is a pain in the ass" part. However, CSS does NOT "work pretty well" if you have merely a vague notion of what you're doing. In fact, you have to be a god-damned wizened expert to do thing which are trivial to do otherwise. Center an element? Make a three-column layout that lines up at the bottom? If you're not confined to CSS, those things are simple. Otherwise, you must be well-fucking-versed in the library of arcane CSS hacks to get those things to work in CSS and have them appear correctly in all browsers.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
must....not.... click... on.... link.... to.....Dvorak.... article....
I only use CSS rarely. Whenever I do, half the time I give up and try something else. My problem is that it tends to not do anything at all when you make changes, usually because you've got a bit of syntax wrong. It just fails silently. What CSS needs to solve this is a compiler. Something that will check the CSS against the page and verify that all the references are valid. I'd love to see an HTML editor which did this, and have it also built into the browsers. Then at least I'd have a good shot at getting it to work when I do use it. Code completion would be nice too.
- His articles are cascading. I mean, it starts sucking at the top, and the further I delve into it, the more it sucks. And if my web browsers looses some of his article, then all hell breaks loose on the suckiness.
- His articles don't follow the standards. Typically, and article posted online is supposed to be interesting, informative, and be written by a well educated man. This article follows none of those standards.
- His article was supposed to be dynamic. But every time I read the damn thing it's stil the same old boring Sh!t.
Got to love the tags of this story:
[+] troll, idiot, dvorak, css, fud (tagging beta)
Only stupid seems to be missing.
And it makes a hissing sound: "csssssssssss...."
Best because it's an amazing tool for ensuring consitency of design, ... Worst because the standard was ... implemented differently in every browser.
These two statements do not contradict each other.
There, I fixed that for you by decree.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Why his articles so frequently show up on /.
Seriously. There are thousands of way-more-competent writers out there who would kill for (and who deserve) this kind of attention.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Cast:
John Dvorak: played by a angry, crying, screaming Horatio Sanz
Nick Burns, your company's computer guy: played by Jimmy Fallon
Dvorak: CSS IS STUPID!! I CAN'T MAKE IT WORK SO IT SUCKS!!! STUPID STANDARDS BODIES!!! WHY DON'T THEY MAKE ALL THE BROWSERS WORK THE SAME?!?!? WHY!?!?!
Burns: I see, it's CSS that's stupid, not you
Dvorak: I CAN'T MAKE IT WORK, SO IT SUCKS!!!
Burns: MOOOOOOOOOOOVE!!!
Burns: Done. Is that so hard? And by the way, you're welcome.
hmmm... HTTP over UDP. That might be fun.
End of Line.
MPEG-4.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Why are you trying to put me out of a job?! Complex CSS implementations are a form of beauraucracy and beauraucracy creates jobs. Why do you think government was invented?
But more seriously, no one said all this web stuff was going to be easy, now did they? And it was said earlier that it's pretty simple just to slap up some decent-looking HTML for those pictures of your vacation to Florida if you don't try to make it look like a web-equivalent of the Louvre. Isn't that enough for you?
Oh and I can't resist this one... heehee. Am meet... he is a professional web developer!
Dude, you're honestly trashing on Netscape, which has only continued to exist via some marketing wormhole, and Mosaic, which was what, a proof of concept browser? While we're at it, lynx's CSS sucks, too!
Yes, Flash, WMP, and Quicktime are a scourge upon the internet. These things need to be solved. The only solution I can suggest is the same thing that has worked in the past. Write a well-documented, easy to implement, open standard for someone to use, and you'll find it in use eventually.
Content management systems (decent ones, anyway) accomplish most of the goals of CSS, and do it better, IMO. Your design can be damn ugly HTML 2.0 if that's what works, and your content doesn't even have to be HTML, if your CMS can filter it and apply some rudimentary markup to make it legible. And even with nasty source material like that, you can have nearly perfect separation of content and design, and even implement access controls so your designer can't touch the content, and your content providers can't fsck up the design. You can use CSS where it helps, and throw it in the trash heap when it confuses things. And once your templates are configured, you never ever have to think about divs, classes, and the cascade again.
CSS Fags are the same fanboys to decide to use XML for everything. No wonder data pipes are getting fuller and fuller, when you have to XMLify every single transaction.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Who really cares? So Dvorak cannot use CSS effectively? Or, maybe he does and just complains about it? He is just like any other IT staff out there making a decent amount of money: Less work + More money = American Dream
Get over it or use dreamweaver you douche.
The big mistakes in CSS were 1) absolute positioning, and 2) the ability to put stuff on top of other stuff. You've all seen pages where the text ran off the left side of the page, or with text on top of other content. We didn't have those problems with HTML tables.
I laugh when I see CSS nuts struggling to make three equal columns. That's what tables are for. The concept that every page should have a Javascript formatting engine is silly.
Remember, CSS fans, that your page might not be viewed the way you planned. It might be viewed through a language translator, like Google's. Or reformatted for a cell phone. With tables, it will probably still look right after translation; with CSS absolute positioning, it will probably look like crap.
Relax. Works for me!8-))
I silently suspect that this Dvorak guy doesn't really exist at all but that he is just an invention by the Slashdot editors allowing them to post stories about subjects that have been discussed around here for ages.
That's happening too often to be mere coincidence...
charon
You can reset the browser positioning defaults to 0 with a single rule:
The asterisk selector matches all elements, and thus the snippet above would read as "set all margins, paddings and suchlike to 0 for every element unless I explicitly say otherwise". It's a very useful trick to have up your sleeve :)
Caveat: Haven't bothered to find out which browser versions support the selector.
Or if your Internet connection happens to lose a bit of HTTP data, will the rendering be ok?
Or if your Internet connection happens to lose a bit of TCP data, will the rendering be ok?
Or if your Internet connection happens to lose a bit of IP data, will the rendering be ok?
Why is it that we continue to entertain the ravings of a third rate power user wanna-be? Off with Dorkvorak, let's please get back to the real technology... This man is simply wasting our time.
The people that want it to "look nice" rather than to work are the culprits!!
I disagree. The people at fault are those who still think it is 1990 and design and programming are wholly separate disciplines. Camps 1 and 2 need to disappear. Camp 3 is growing fast.
Camp 1: Designers who want eye candy.
Camp 2: Programmers who would prefer that the Web be reduced to square corners, primary colors, dense copy, and no white space.
Camp 3: People who understand that design and programming have to work together in order to create true usability. Call them interaction designers, web developers, or webphibians. The name is unimportant, but the cross-disciplinary skillset is vital.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
No. This is essentially a programmers' setup. CSS is an attempt to separate content and form. No designer in their right mind wants that. On a printed page, content and form are identical. CSS is the opposite.
CSS may describe a visual look and feel, but its implementation is all about programming aesthetic. It's no wonder most designers mock up their sites in Photoshop. Not Eclipse, Visual Studio, or even Dreamweaver. That's where designers go from "this is what I want", to "this is the month of aggravation I have to go through to get something remotely like the mockup I did in four hours" Believe me, designers need the functionality (such as it is) of CSS but this is not the way it would be implemented by designers.
CSS and HTML to some extent were created by programmers FOR designers. I desperately pray for the day that "mark up" languages, style sheets, and their goobledy gook visual approximations disappear into the mists of time.
LWH
Dvorak's ultimate aim is to generate lots of traffic for his site. Looking at this long Slashdot thread it seems like Dvorak succeeded.
I held out learning and embracing CSS for along time, but finally did. Yes, there are inconsistencies, but they're not that bad, really. I keep an instance of IE, Firefox, Opera, Netscape open at all times when I'm working. Every now and then, I reload my work from each of them. "Oh, that browser has an issues with this..." Okay, tweak around it, no biggie. Still beats programming in the Windows API :P
Also, I found some great web pages documenting differences/bugs between browser versions. When you understnad these, and work around them, it's really not that bad. Again, the complexity of dealing with the exceptions is an order of magnitude easier than dealing with the oddities of the Win API...
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
How about the laws of thermodynamics that prevent us from making perpetual motion machines?
I mean I'm with you on the other things, but this is just a case where you don't understand the problem. If you cared enough to do some research and think about it, there's not really a nice solution.
Dvorak so much, why don't you just quit reading him.
Sometimes I think the editors post a story about a Dvorak column just to get traffic from all the anti-Dvoraks.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Why didn't I think of that? Just ignore the standard and design for IE. Its such a great idea! Let's be practical here; who really cares about those fringe users running Linux, Unix, OS X, embedded systems, etc. If they want to look at websites, they can just get a real OS, right?
The sad part is that many people will probably read your comment and miss the sarcasm completely.
I have had many otherwise knowledgable people who make their living from designing websites defend the practice of designing for IE and IE alone, arguing that since that's where the market is, web standards can be damned.
Even if it was not intentional on its part, the bad CSS rendering code in Internet Explorer can be considered another of Microsoft's "Embrace and Extend" strategies. After all, if Microsoft cannot own the web, at least it can render it unviewable by anything other than its own software.
Ah, good ol' Microsoft: Setting back world progress in computing yet again.
Incidentally, to whom do I address my invoice at Microsoft to cover the months of unnecessary work I have spent over the years to make my perflectly CSS-compliant websites not looked like squashed garbage in MSIE?
I think it's about time Mr. D stopped commenting on anything technical, and found a subject that can be dumbed down to his level.
It's at +4 already, but this post ought to have +6 added specially for it!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Me like your subtle kick-in-ze-balls.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
It sounds like you missed the geek meeting where we decided non-geeks aren't supposed to use computers. You must have been sick that day. The end goal is not to make usable working computers and software. The goal is to make things that only half work and then grind out non-geeks will to use computers by providing subpar support. Non-geeks have proven surprisingly persistent though. We may have to schedule another meeting to come up with a new plan.
Dvorak likes to incite anger, possibly riots, by picking on whatever technically minded people feel passionate about. For years, he's been slamming the Macintosh, and this week he's after web standards. Don't worry open source developers, he'll probably attack you next. Anyone that hasn't been picked on lately is on his radar.
Whenever I read an article by this man, I take it with a grain of salt. I can never be sure if he's being serious or simply antagonistic. Claiming that CSS doesn't work is obviously overstating the issue. His article is as ludicrous as any of his others. CSS, for him, is apparently a chore but that doesn't make it "broken."
I really don't understand why news sites continue to syndicate his overtly biased sensationalism. For over a decade, I've read his trite musings. Not once has he ever given me insight into something profound nor has he made me stop to think. More often than not, I find myself quickly identifying his slant and turning the page. I strongly suggest everyone do the same and stop assuming that he's trying to "inform" anyone about anything.
"I'm in the process of redesigning..." or any similar phrasing.
The web is inherently impermanent. It's a given that any web site is constantly in a state of design and development. As new information, statistics, and trends come through, most web sites are in flux. It's like your home. You generally don't have to tell your visitors you're in the process of restructuring where you keep your drinking glasses. It's your home and it can be assumed throughout your life you're going to shift things around to suit your ever-changing needs and desires.
Bloggers and other web developers constantly letting you know that they're changing things is annoying. It's especially annoying that they feel it all has to be done in one fell swoop, that they can't change their site one style at a time, or adjust their site one widget at a time. They believe it's an all or nothing game, you can't just change a font style, you have to scrap the whole lot and go back to the drawing board. It's like everytime you want to re-zone NYC, you break out bulldozers, level the city, then start paving sidewalks again.
"I'm in the process of redesigning..." is just the textual equivilant of an "Under Construction" animated gif.
>Sorry, I don't want a plugin that's mostly used to enable advertisers to max out my CPU.
Be fair, there's more to Flash than that.
The plugins have also offered a steady stream of security holes in addition to the feature you mentioned.
I wonder. Would a CSS specification where elements did NOT float outside the page flow do any better? I mean, one of the hugest issues is that designers cannot seem to intuitively whip up complicated layouts with multiple columns and footers and so on. At least, not without grabbing something from the Garden as a crutch.
So the question becomes, how would it be possible to create a version of CSS that designers could grok? And I think one of the basics would be if floats simply affected page flow as a designer might expect -- in other words, boxes should affect each other, and be relative to the boxes they are in, and take up space that is correllated to their size. Another would be to see widths constrained to the content if no width is specified (the current model has the boxes expanding browser-wide in many cases, even if the content is only a pixel wide).
By doing this, wouldn't CSS become a more easily comprehended science, because it would lay out in a way that parallels physical objects? What risks come from such a model, and can they be overcome?
-Tony
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
THIS is what the EU should be looking at in terms of monopolistic practises (embrace & extend) - I'm picking EU, cause we all know how the US caved.... MS should be made to support the W3C STANDARDS. They are the standards upon which the web is based. MS is a convicted monopoly, and behaving like this (non standard implementations of existing standards, the default browser, therefore creating a defacto standard) is a bad thing. MAKE them fix IE. Sure, keep the ActiveX stuff if you want - I could care less (Ubuntu/Firefox user). But at least implement the W3C complete standard so it WORKS. Oh - and make them include/support OpenDocument, while I'm on my wishlist, as well....
What's On Your Network ??? http://www.open-audit.org/
...I know I'll hate THAT article from Dvorak,
so I'm simply Moving Along, Moving Along,
Nothing To See Here.
It would be a bit easier to design for multiple systems if Apple didn't have a terrible EULA that prevents you from installing it on non-Apple computers, thereby making Mac-friendly development that much harder. I just discovered this today when I was going to try to make my Windows-Linux dual-boot into a Windows-Linux-Mac triple-boot, and I am pissed. This sucks for developers and makes it that much harder to design CSS (or anything else) for multiple platforms.
I wonder why we don't hear that much railing on Apple for these restrictions...
...this article exhibited the recurring "text layered on top of text, rendering it unreadable" bug that has plagued Slashdot... ever since it switched over to CSS. AFAIK, the only reason Slashdot switched over is because a bunch of people complained that it wasn't using "standard compliant CSS, blah, blah". The actual functionality of Slashdot is only marginally improved, and the improvements probably could have been done just as easily without the CSS.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I'm amazed on the level of tolerance the internet community has with this guy, all he does is plug his site at any chance he has and blog about the lamest things in the world.
What about him sticking his finger in his ass and blogging about it?.
Fuck you Dvorak, up yours!!!!
I see no reason to have two different languages with different attribute names, etc. Just add to HTML and toss CSS. Rough example:
<style name="foo" width=1 cellpadding=3 color="red"\>
stuff...
<table style="foo">
stuff...
</table>
Table-ized A.I.
said it first. 'Shatner' should become short hand for 'it doesn't work' or 'none of this shit works'.
Did the the software past the unit tests?
Shatner.
Did the 'Miracle oil' stop the leak?
Shatner.
Did the new legislation stop illegal immigration?
Shatner.
'Shatner', use it every day...
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
...because there is an inherent tension in the system. Page authors want you to view their web page as they have designed it, and users want to view it the way that suits them.
Has everyone forgotten that the original purpose of HTML was to separate content from presentation? All of this stuff is tacked on to HTML to overcome the "limitation" that HTML can't guarantee what the page will look like on the client device. I've got news for you, guys, this "limitation" is part of the original design.
Aside from the obnoxious incompatibilities between CSS and JavaScript implementations, I think the major problem with web development is the shoe-horning of layout. When you're coding HTML and CSS, where does your layout information reside? Well, your stylesheet is full of "position", "margin", and "padding" properties, so most people assume that CSS separates layout from content. However, even if you're coding in strict XHTML, the order and nesting of your tags *also* affects where on the screen the content ends up. I spent a lot of time being frustrated with web programming, but recently I've discovered that it can be easy, as long as you maintain explicit barriers between the three elements of your website: the style, the layout and the content. Obviously the HTML contains content and CSS the style. But where is the layout? In a page template! Using ASP.Net Master Pages or Ruby on Rails partials, the content of your page doesn't know where on the screen it'll end up. And even better, since CSS is stressful for layout (but great for style), you can use tables in your template (for situations where CSS positioning is too much work). Voila, web programming is a breeze.
No, no, no. It's when they try to put the CSS on a truck. Damnit, Beavis, the interwebtubes is not a truck.
the future is here, it is just not evenly distributed - w. gibson
Ignoring for the moment that CSS is flawed, I wonder if something like a standards cartel could improve the situation... the standards bodies don't do any good at all because nobody cares. The browsers have no motivation to follow the standards since most sites don't follow the standards. As long as they render the top 100 sites reasonably okay, they won't change. So what if the top 20 sites or so formed a cartel, standardized their sites and did the terrible faux-pas of not allowing their site to show in known-to-be-non-compliant browsers? Of course I always hated sites like that, but that was because back in the day things were so in flux it made no sense; I'd have had to use a different browser for every site. However if it was consistent across most of the big sites, it would have a lot more weight -- like the pressure to get a browser in the first place. They'd be saying "this is how it works". If those top 20 all agreed on the set of standards compliant browsers (ACID2, perhaps) and then required those... Yahoo, Google, Amazon, Ebay, Slashdot, etc. They'd all have to do it on the same day. I bet that within a week all the non-standards compliant browsers would be reduced to well below 5% market share. Maybe enough to kill them off and then other sites would follow.
What is the motivation for the companies to do this? Saving loads of cash on cross browser testing. Once the browsers got in line, or were killed off, development costs would be cheaper. I don't expect perfection, there will always be some ambiguity in the standard. But I bet a move like that could bring us pretty well past the growing pains.
All this written by a guy who keeps all his sites in HTML 3.2 because it's the only thing that works reliably...
Cheers.
just another stupid rant by trollist-mor to gain a few more hits. The guy openly confessed to use that tactic!...
I don't feel like it...
Dvorak, trolling? Oh, no, this couldn't be possible... could it?
Another day, another Dvorak troll.
Rudd-O - http://rudd-o.com/
I think you're looking at this all wrong. When I read the article, I did find it extremely funny. I found it funny because I had the thought: I wonder how many other Slashdotters are reading this right now and thinking, "Holy Shit! I swear, I could quit my tech job right now, act like a frikken idiot, and write Dvorak's stupid editorial pieces for him and no one would even realize." That was funny. But then I thought, "...and let's see who makes more money for their time, effort, and expertise. Oh yes. Now I remember what we reward." That was the part that was extremely stupid and not funny.
This is called DOM Inspector and it comes standard in Firefox
Rudd-O - http://rudd-o.com/
In case you don't know where the reference is from: ACID2 test
He doesn't like the cascading part of CSS. Guess what Johnny? That's OO. Maybe Dvorak just isn't smart enough to use CSS.