TOPIC: WEB DESIGN
Are developers and designers overcomplicating their CSS?
11th May 2007When I have been tweaking the widgets in this blog, the thought crossed my mind that purveyors of open source blogging and CMS's may be overcomplicating matters with the CSS that they are writing. Using inheritance without much thought as to others having to pick it up is one irritation, but bunching styles together can confuse too. For instance, you can draw from two different styles for the same HTML element (it's what's going when you see class="class1 class2" in a tag definition), which is OK if done simply but can confuse matters when customisation is attempted later. Drupal particularly suffers from this bugbear, but it's there on WordPress too, though not to the same extent. Using a hierarchy to define and attach your styles (#id1 .class2 tag1 {style definition...} is the kind of thing that I have in mind), can also confound, even if I admit to finding the approach very useful for myself. I think that I know what's driving this: the need to cut down the bulk of CSS files but using the advanced features that I mentioned above without clear commenting and other documentation hampers later efforts. It would be nice if every developer of a theme to use in blogging or CMS software was forced to document their work extensively and share that documentation with interested users. After all, sharing is the whole purpose of their endeavours...
New theme
31st January 2007After trying to get WordPress.com to amend the Andreas04 theme and getting nowhere, I decided to jump ship and try the Andreas09 one instead. The permalink titles are more sensible on this one so I'll see what Technorati makes of them. Even though I have had to change theme, the wonders of CSS have allowed me to carry over elements of the colour scheme from the old to the new. If you really want to witness the raw power of CSS, pop over to CSS Zen Garden where the same HTML code is rendered in extraordinarily different ways thanks to CSS. There is even a book written by Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag to go with the website.