Comments on: CSS doesn’t suck, you’re just doing it wrong.

By: Garann

Garann — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:11:20 +0000

Sorry for commenting on such an old post, but I stumbled on this after reading your OOCSS stuff (which is awesome) and just wanted to say thanks for putting it so plainly. I’ve had frustrations with people hating on CSS many, many times, and have never been able to be this articulate about why they’re being unfair. Nice work!

By: Owen

Owen — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 04:56:03 +0000

While I’m sure with a lot of practice and knowledge you can get good at CSS and make it “predictable”, I’d say that that is exactly the problem. I can accept that complex problems can have complex solutions that require a deeper understanding of what you’re doing but learning CSS seems to mean learning its quirks and workarounds rather than learning its power. In my experience, rarely has the intuitive solution lead to the proper output in CSS. I’d rather have something more complex to program that was at least predictable and intuitive.

Many people are quick to blame IE for every problem. I hate IE with a passion but I’d say that the standards themselves are to blame for all of the bugs and incompatibilities. IE may have made the biggest hash of it (by far) but every browser got it wrong, and that to me indicates that there is a problem with the specification itself.

By: john

john — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:27:21 +0000

No, CSS sucks. it’s a kludge to allow for multiple vendors to completely ignore the fact that a standard exists to prevent the need to make a kludge like CSS to work across multiple products. While CSS does an admirable job at its task, the task itself is the major problem. I would submit that CSS can NEVER work well, as its a solution to the wrong side of the problem of incompatible browsers and standards

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:39:03 +0000

When I read some articles, I almost feel like the people writing are completely separated from the “web” when they throw around titles involving the word “engineer.” Sometimes people get way too conceptual. CSS was, is, and always will be easy for anyone who considers themselves to be even a decent web designer/developer/front-end “engineer.” If it’s not, don’t use the title

By: Nicole

Nicole — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:15:00 +0000

@Jim You are right, it is still pretty fragile. I’d recommend watching my video from Web Directions North about Object Oriented CSS. Do that first, then check out the code on the OOCSS open source project on github. You’ll notice that grids + templates are less than 1K. modules are around 2K. The OO approach is why it stays so light, and yet it allows a lot of flexibility. The goal is that all of the heavy lifting is done in the structure objects, which are then extended by extremely predictable skin objects.

There is an HD-ish version of the video available for download from the YDN site.

The example code:
http://wiki.github.com/stubbornella/oocss

Keep in mind that OOCSS isn’t a framework, this is just an example. OOCSS is more like another language, anyone can write it, it just requires us to think in an object based way, separate structure objects from skins, and separate containers and content.

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:02:07 +0000

… but it still seems pretty fragile.

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:00:04 +0000

OK so CSS doesn’t suck and it is different (ie not just another programming language). So how do you make it “… predictable, scalable, modular and even object oriented.”?? I have made attempts at getting there but it still seems pretty.

By: studdugie

studdugie — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:08:05 +0000

@Nicole: Thanx for the link. Let the healing begin!

By: Nicole

Nicole — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 02:04:48 +0000

@studdugie Did I say evil?

I’m beginning to wonder if I should create a 2-3 intensive CSS course… that will take more thought. In the mean time, check out the code I’m releasing as a part of my OO framework. The docs I’m publishing on github explain more about how OOCSS works.

http://wiki.github.com/stubbornella/oocss

By: studdugie

studdugie — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:51:13 +0000

Great defense of the virtues of CSS and all that, but you know what would have made this blog post useful to me? Links to where I (the evil software engineer type) can go to learn to be less of a hater and more like you.

There is a line in the post that states that beginners can produce reusable code in about 2-3 weeks. Where do I sign-up for this 2-3 week course?