[Technical/HTML] Troubleshooting CSS

Tympanus ^ | July 17, 2013 | Hugo Giraudel

[re_nortex]

CSS is a mess. First introduced in ~1995, it was meant to style basic text documents. Not websites. Not applications. Text documents. It has come a long way since then. Probably a bit too long.

A lot of things were not intended in the first place like multi-column layouts, responsive web design and more; this is why it has become a language full of hacks and glitches, like some kind of odd steam machine with a bunch of extensions.

On the bright side, this is what makes CSS fun (or kinda)! And this is also why we have jobs. Because I’m personally convinced that generating efficient, cross-browser and future-proof CSS is not possible and probably won’t be anytime soon.

[re_nortex]

The image of the coffee mug in the article really says it all for those of us living in the world of web development:

[re_nortex]

Jim: I think you might enjoy the article. I’m not sure if John hangs out here much so you may want to give him the link. I had to laugh to keep from crying with that coffee mug picture since I fight the different browser implementations of how CSS gets displayed. And often, just a point release by the same vendor undoes how something was rendered a version before.

[Ray76]

Now that photo is a joke not everyone will “get”

[re_nortex]

Now that photo is a joke not everyone will “get”.

That's true. Hopefully by prepending the title with Technical/HTML, those with a geek background will find the picture amusing. And, of course, the linked article is worthwhile for those of us in the world of development.

[OneWingedShark]

The thing that makes CSS such a mess [WRT web-development] is that it works against the design-goal of HTML:
HTML was designed to have the content marked and allow the display-implementation (browser) to handle the layout. [Like text-only browsers.]

If we wanted to have a good, standard, portable way to to handle exacting layouts we should have gone with PostScript or PDF.

[re_nortex]

HTML was designed to have the content marked and allow the display-implementation (browser) to handle the layout.

In that regard, Free Republic is the gold standard of web design. There are times when circumstances are such that I have to use the lynx browser (a versatile but character UI application). FR is one of the few sites where navigation still works with ease. And of course, the simple, clean design renders just perfectly.

In my work, I'd love to present pages the FR-way. But, alas, our customers demand razzle dazzle so the code is littered with browser-specific if conditions for the Ajax, PHP and Perl components to work. I will admit that MSIE has improved over the years, with MSIE 10 and Firefox 22 no longer requiring different code execution paths at runtime.

[Texas Fossil]

Glad I am not the only person still using lynx browser.

Even have it set up on this Xubuntu Linux box. It goes directly to Drudge Report. Sure speeds up my reading process on that sight, without the page refresh issues that it has and all the garbage that goes with his site.

Lynx is really fast and stable. Simple works.

[BushCountry]

What I say to all my dates.

[re_nortex]

And if the date doesn't go so well, there's always this:

<!--
-->

:-)

[willyd]

#that {
is: awesome;
_is: IE8;
}

[BushCountry]

/* Blah, blah, blah
*/

Story is about CSS ;^)

[re_nortex]

Good catch!

#    Ain't it great that there's only one way to 
!    comment out unwanted code. The unsurpassed 
%    consistency throughout the realm of programming 
//   languages in this regard is truly remarkable. 
;;   That's why I've never make a mistake when I 
--   have to transition from one language to 
{    another when I'm in deep coding mode. }
/*   Standards are a real blessing. */
C    Collaboration among the designers of these 
REM  marvelous tools has made life so much easier 
=cut for we code monkeys.
#if 0
     /sarc
#endif