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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.
The real problem is that browsers aren't following standards, not that CSS is broken. But any decent web designer knows what won't work on which browsers, and decide how to do things accordingly.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
..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
Katz^WDvorak is complaining about it now because he finally got around to trying to redo his blog with it. From the article, it appears he's basically experiencing some pain with his first exposure trying to format using a technology that he doesn't really understand. No real surprise there.
Sure, CSS has issues, but most of his frustration appears to stem from the fact that he really doesn't know much about CSS.
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
"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.
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.
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
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)
Precisely. The first clue should be when he says:
What the hell is he talking about? Not only is that not CSS's "real benefit", I can't even figure out how he managed to get the idea that this is what CSS is all about. Did he take one look at the CSS Zen Garden and completely miss the point or something?
He can't even get basic facts and terminology right:
Nope, wrong. That's inheritance. The cascade is when you resolve rules found in multiple stylesheets.
You don't "set parameters for style elements" at all. Style elements are instances of the <style> element type, and they are used to include parts of a stylesheet in an HTML or XHTML document. You don't set parameters for elements either. He could be talking about attributes, or perhaps properties, it's hard to tell when his terminology is so muddled.
Finally, this bit is hilarious:
That's right, he's been totally oblivious to CSS, and now, when he starts to learn a bit about it, he blames his ignorance on some sort of conspiracy! That's right, us "techie insiders" have been keeping the truth from you, muhahaha!
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
I think his bigger problem is that he holds the common misapprehension that HTML/CSS/web browsers form a typesetting or page layout system.
If you are trying to do layout that is pixel-perfect on the web you are fucking up.
-Peter
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.
So do it for your non-commercial work. Don't turn them away, just disable all CSS and JavaScript and give them the plain HTML. Include a big notice at the top with conditional comments telling them that their browser is broken and that is why they are getting the retard-friendly version instead of the high quality version everybody else is getting, and provide links to other browsers.
Sure, you'll lose some users, but you'll save a lot of work and inspire a few people to switch. The trick is to make them feel like they are missing out on something other people are getting.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
I thoroughly enjoyed those percentages you either pulled out of your ass, or were delivered, Joseph Smith style, on a stone tablet from heaven.
Jeremy
> Why the hell can't anyone stick to a standard?
Web designers have been asking Microsoft this question for 10 years.
(And now they're asking why Firefox 2.0 can't pass the ACID2 test, either)
Funny how monopolies don't care much about competing on merits like that. You, the consumer, get screwed as a result. 10 years on, and it still needs to be explained?
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
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!
Near as I can tell, it has been years since Dvorak has understood anything in the tech world.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
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...?
Writing web pages following the standards is a good thing, but making a complex CSS layout work with some buggy browsers out there is hard. The solution is to not recreate the CSS from scratch, but starting from an already debugged existing layout.
E.g.:
Too many CSS web developers are trying to reinvent the wheel.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
Sure, sometimes I, too, believe that Dvorak might have difficulty finding his a$$ with both hands and a map, but many of his articles help me to understand how laypersons interpret technology.
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.
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
(Disclaimer: I may have forgotten the actual most common cause of death.)
im in ur
You're halfway right, but only in that decent web designers understand that their pages won't look the same in all browsers. That's the nature of the medium. If you can't truly come to grips with that concept and work with it instead of against it, then you'll never become good.
Again, web is not print, and you're only hurting yourself if you try to treat it as such. Real web design recognizes that users have different browsers, operating systems, plugins, extensions, fonts, sizes, monitors, gamuts, resolutions, DPIs, and so on. It is completely, utterly impossible to make an end run around those differences. Either make a design that scales and flows well on every client you can get your hands on (including Lynx and cell phones), or make a pretty PDF and be done with it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Netscape didn't follow standards until Netscape 6? What version of crack are you smoking?
Mosaic sucked for a long time.
Since Mosaic predates the HTML standard it's stupid to say that. Mosaic and later Netscape where moving faster than the W3C, because people were yelling for better features. Of course they'll screw up, their pioneers, it's a messy job. They where ahead of the standards.
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?
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.
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