Why good designers use CSS
June 18th 2005
I’m going to try to explain this in a succint and clear manner, without writing an essay.
Good designers use web standards because it’s stupid not to. Literally. HTML without CSS layout and design is like C without functions. It’s a perfect analogy — without functions, programmers would have to repeat code that does the same thing over and over again, and get it the same each time it was repeated to remain consistent and avoid errors. Without CSS, designers would have to repeat code for everything, and they’d have to make sure everything remains consistent manually. It’s a horrible thought not to have functions in any programming language — it’s the same with HTML.
CSS is just the natural evolution of web coding. Before, the web didn’t have abstraction. Now it does, and smart people use it. It’s stupid not to. So why all the hype? Because people who understand it really get how important it is. It finally made the web codable. It dissolved the need for middleman design tools. It made web code comprehensible. It’s just the right way to do it.
This is why we need standards support from all major browsers; because once you give people a taste of what’s right, they can’t go back to doing things the wrong way.
Why am I writing this? Because I’m sick of working on this damn project that has 18 nested tables for every piece of text. I’m sure glad we’re moving away from that…
Agreed!
On a completely unrelated note, I was wondering when you were going to release your playlist software/plugin? It seems pretty functional as it is.
I’m waiting for these guys to release a new version of their “now playing” plugin, which I use to post the info to the server from Winamp.
The current version has a lot of problems, from bad metadata gathering (no flac or ogg support), to a 3-second total freeze of keyboard input every time the song changes.
I’m looking into other plugins for winamp, like AMIP. So far I haven’t had time to get any of them working, hence, I haven’t been using any, and the song stays sort of the same, if you didn’t notice
If you still want the code I’d be happy to post it somewhere.
I would love to take a look at the code. There are many other plugins of that type, maybe I can get one to work!