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CSS Does Not Suck

Posted By:
Matt
Posted On:
September 28th, 2007
Posted In:
CSS & XHTML
Comments:
5 Responses, Join The Conversation.

A friend recently sent me an article that made me laugh. The article is titled Ten reasons why CSS sucks and it’s painfully clear that the guy that wrote it is really just frustrated with his limited understanding and experience with CSS. Check out a few quotes from his article:

  • The way that styles cascade from one level of layout to a deeper layout makes it difficult to figure out why a particular item is styled in a certain way.
  • The way CSS works there can be many ways to do the same thing.
  • When the logo changes size or placement how will you know what styles to touch?
  • First of it makes web-pages load very slowly. Even when you’re on a fast connection the browser can’t figure out where to place objects until the entire web-page has finished loading.
  • CSS is a pain to work with. Take a look at some of the designs over at CSSZenGarden. The designs are both attractive and sophisticated. A good designer could take these designs and mock up similar designs in PhotoShop or Illustrator in a matter of hours but take the same designs and ask for it in CSS and it may take a couple days.
  • Each time you make an edit to your CSS you have to refresh your browser to see what it’s actually going to look like.
  • If you can’t get the site to look exactly the way you want on every single browser then how can you claim that CSS is a good design tool or even a success?

The idea that the cascade makes CSS hard to follow and slower to load than bloated, table-based layouts is insane. The cascade is what makes CSS so powerful, it’s what the C stands for is CSS! I think the problem is that HE can’t get his sites to look exactly the way he wants across all browsers, I can.

I’m not gonna write a full rebuttal because someone already did: Ten Reasons Why CSS Does Not Suck.

Here’s the comment I left on both sites (before I realized that this argument was a year old and everyone has probably already forgotten about it by now):

Anyone who thinks making column layouts using valid XHTML and CSS is hard clearly doesn’t have a solid grasp of the languages. Any good Front-End Developer can cut a basic CSSZenGarden page in less than 30 minutes.

Since when is CSS a design tool anyway? It’s more like the printing press, the tool that gets the design to the medium. Any good Designer knows they have to keep the medium in mind while designing.

Stop using tables for layout and I’ll stop convincing your boss/clients to get rid of you and hire someone who knows what they’re doing.

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Comments

  1. Greg Says:
    September 28th, 2007 at 3:34 pm

    I’m glad the article made you laugh. The article gets a lot of traffic mostly from people typing ‘CSS sucks’ into google. While it’s easy to dismiss my article by saying that I don’t know my stuff it’s much harder to explain why CSS is efficient, easy to understand and compatible.

    Reproducing a good CSS design from ZenGarden can’t be done in 1/2 hour. If you look at CSS source on many of the designs you will see all sorts of non-trivial hacks, tricks and techniques to make the designs possible and workable in all browsers.

    I’m not advocating tables I’m only pointing out the delinquencies of CSS as it stands today. Many designers are now using nested div’s in the same way as tr and td tags were used in tables. Same stuff different tag.

    Anyway thanks for reading. :)

  2. Matt Says:
    September 28th, 2007 at 4:02 pm

    Again Greg misses the point. If you know CSS well it can be done in 1/2 an hour. I know exactly all of the hacks I will have to use to make a layout work cross-browser and I know how to use them. It takes surprisingly little time when you know what you’re doing.

    Those designers that use nested divs in the same way they used to use tr and td tags also miss the point. Divs are markup, not CSS. Learn to properly target elements using CSS and those nested divs will cease to exist.

  3. Dave Says:
    September 28th, 2007 at 4:13 pm

    Many people fail to fully explore what CSS is capable of and miss the point (I failed once and didn’t relearn until about a year later), since their previous WSIYG web site production methods where easier.

    CSS is as powerful, or as ineffective as the person who is writing the code chooses to make it.

    “CSS sucks because it forces designers to think about how to make it work technically rather than how to make it work from a design perspective.”

    This is one of my favorite parts of CSS. I like creating a balance between making designs work in both worlds and not just one.

  4. kat Says:
    October 8th, 2007 at 1:40 pm

    “CSS sucks” is also the name of a song by the band CSS (Cansei De Ser Sexy). So maybe that’s driving some traffic too!

    “I think the problem is that HE can’t get his sites to look exactly the way he wants across all browsers, I can.”

    HAHAH…amazing, Matt.

  5. Grant Says:
    October 9th, 2007 at 12:02 pm

    I agree fully with what you’re saying Matt.

    Never having the privlege of using table based layout I can’t say I understand where he’s coming from. I learned how to design (from one of the best I know) using CSS and I can’t see how one could say it’s not a better way to design.

    Also being a new designer I’d have to dissagree with his comment on most of the CSS Zen garden layouts. I’d have to say I could probably achive a lot of the stuff up there with a few hours solid work (obviously there are acceptions to this comment).

    I guess I’m jsut lucky though from having a teacher that enforced proper markup and accessibility with threats of a slow painfull death. ;)

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