I definitely see your point. Small sites aren't as difficult to manage with straight HTML, but the only possible way to manage the styles of a huge site with hundreds of pages like Paws and Effect is with a CSS document.
I'll admit that CSS can be pretty cranky as far as cross-browser functionality, and there certainly are a ton of work-arounds to make things display properly in IE, Firefox, etc. That's one reason why I primarily use CSS to control font styles and things like borders and dividing lines: I leave the grunt work of writing codes for column settings and the like to the real programmers. :-)
I'm also wary of the "bells and whistles over substance" mentality. There was a lot of that when Flash-driven sites were all the rage. And speaking of RAGE, there's nothing that pisses me off like zip-ding Flash sites of the types that web design and marketing agencies put together in the early 200os--before people began to realize that a) Flash interferes with accessibility standards because of the lack of "alt" text and b) web readers can't "see" the text in the Flash files. Flash is great for computer games; for websites, not so much.
I'd be more inclined to think of CSS as a passing fad like Flash, except for the fact that more and more designers are working with CSS because they're seeing that despite the crankiness and kludges, CSS works pretty much seamlessly with PHP-driven content management systems like WordPress, DotNetNuke, and the like. I've been seeing browsers become more consistently compatible with standardized CSS code (except for IE, because pretty much everything about Microsoft web browsers and HTML coding sucks).
When I design web content or print content, I follow the axiom "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should." Sooner or later, all the zip-ding-wow-look-at-my-crazy-CSS crowd will calm down, just as the zip-ding-look-at-my-Java-apps and the zip-ding-look-at-my-animated-GIF-spinning-pentacles and the zip-ding-look-at-my-blink-tag people did. :-)
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2010-01-08 03:05 pm (UTC)I'll admit that CSS can be pretty cranky as far as cross-browser functionality, and there certainly are a ton of work-arounds to make things display properly in IE, Firefox, etc. That's one reason why I primarily use CSS to control font styles and things like borders and dividing lines: I leave the grunt work of writing codes for column settings and the like to the real programmers. :-)
I'm also wary of the "bells and whistles over substance" mentality. There was a lot of that when Flash-driven sites were all the rage. And speaking of RAGE, there's nothing that pisses me off like zip-ding Flash sites of the types that web design and marketing agencies put together in the early 200os--before people began to realize that a) Flash interferes with accessibility standards because of the lack of "alt" text and b) web readers can't "see" the text in the Flash files. Flash is great for computer games; for websites, not so much.
I'd be more inclined to think of CSS as a passing fad like Flash, except for the fact that more and more designers are working with CSS because they're seeing that despite the crankiness and kludges, CSS works pretty much seamlessly with PHP-driven content management systems like WordPress, DotNetNuke, and the like. I've been seeing browsers become more consistently compatible with standardized CSS code (except for IE, because pretty much everything about Microsoft web browsers and HTML coding sucks).
When I design web content or print content, I follow the axiom "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should." Sooner or later, all the zip-ding-wow-look-at-my-crazy-CSS crowd will calm down, just as the zip-ding-look-at-my-Java-apps and the zip-ding-look-at-my-animated-GIF-spinning-pentacles and the zip-ding-look-at-my-blink-tag people did. :-)