Comments on: Don’t waste time writing HTML and CSS

By: Denver Web Development

Denver Web Development — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 23:56:58 +0000

Since there are so many layout tricks out there now, especially using layered Div’s combined with tables even can be very effective. Once you find your grove and what works best for you, go for it…

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 05:35:08 +0000

@James Socol: Well, it seems our ways of looking at accessibility are different. I’m very much against the notion of forcing accessibility by the law. People just following the law will make a shitty job.

We seem to also have different ideas about how to make a scaling layout. It’s not just about throwing some ems in there. But we’re not getting anywhere with this discussion, so lets just concentrate on something else. Thanks!

By: James Socol

James Socol — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:21:58 +0000

@Emil: Accessibility is general, at least not in the US. The National Federation of the Blind vs. Target settlement, while not the strong precedence of a ruling, still sets a legal precedent. Everything needs to be accessible or is open to suit.

Now, maybe you can say the risk of law suits is minimal, or you’re too small to care, or you just don’t care. But if you use ems, it will scale by itself, so it can’t zoom “too much.”

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:19:33 +0000

@James Socol: is it never enough? I’m not talking about writing functions to accommodate for just a couple of zoom levels, I’m talking about using scaling layouts, but don’t care if it breaks when you zoom too much. When something like that is enough or not is determined by the project and is not something general you can decide without a context.

By: James Socol

James Socol — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:05:38 +0000

@Emil: Two zoom sizes is not enough. And since this is about not “wasting time,” why write functions to scale the text to your predetermined sizes when you can just use scaling layouts? Surely wasting time in .NET (or whatever else) is as bad as wasting time in HTML and CSS.

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:39:19 +0000

@James Socol: I understand what you mean. My argument goes like this: You don’t know what text people will put on the site (it changes all the time). You have to somehow select what font-size you want to support, by looking at some sample text and guessing. If you still do that, it’s not that hard to pick a pixel size that handles two zoom levels well, and stick with that. If it saves lots of time, you can focus on hacking .NET to make it accessible instead. It’s all about priorities.

By: James Socol

James Socol — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:59:19 +0000

@Emil: There’s no arbitrary, universal limit for word-length. But long words don’t wrap when you scale the text in a fixed-width box (pixels or percent). Use ems or another flexible-width measurement.

I’m not worried about default behavior. Hopefully the design properly handles all the text at its default size (or you can manually hyphenate). I’m worried about what happens when you hit ctrl +.

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:37:28 +0000

@James Socol: So what do you propose? Which are the longest word you will allow in your boxes? No limit?

By: James Socol

James Socol — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:37:58 +0000

@Emil I didn’t mean CSS should be used to handle long words; I meant that if you have the word “Corporation” in a pixel-width box, and make the text bigger in the still-extremely-common last generation of browsers, or even Chrome, it will bleed over the edge, unless you overflow: hidden, I suppose. (The New York Times’ site always comes to mind.)

Two things which are, in my experience, true: people change the text size, and lots of people still use IE6 and Firefox 2.

Maybe you can choose to ignore the needs of that audience. I can’t. Especially in light of the Target vs NFB settlement in this country.

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:39:19 +0000

@chrisco: Sorry, I’m not looking for another job at the moment. Please don’t use my comment board as an advertising system.

By: chrisco

chrisco — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:30:23 +0000

Hi Emil,

Found your blog through a link on the Geek Meet Stockholm page. Glad I found it :)

Thanks,
Chris
BuzzPal.com/Team

PS: I am looking for concept development / user experience / user interaction design type folks. Let me know if you know any good ones or send them my way. Thanks.

By: Justin Ferrara

Justin Ferrara — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:46:38 +0000

Thanks for the tips. I’ve found that tip #3 is very helpful when developing larger web applications, especially frameworks.

By: Johan

Johan — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 07:03:11 +0000

- File versioning to improve workflow (simply a last modified date hard-coded can be a good start)

- Reusing code blocks

By: Rasmus Kaj

Rasmus Kaj — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:00:16 +0000

No, I’m not saying that you should use the full browser width for text, just that pixels are the wrong unit for it. Use the em unit or a percentage! I tend to use percentages, but also specify a max-width for the actual text containers in ems.

Too many sites specify a content width in pixels, and a tiny font. A user who finds tiny fonts uncomfortable soon learns to change the font size (ctrl +), but then many layouts break down.

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 20:06:40 +0000

@James Socol: There is no good way to handle long words in CSS, so I can’t see how that matters in the case of rounded corners. Do you mean that all boxes should be wide enough to be able to contain long words?

@Rasmus Kaj: For the special case of expert users I agree with you. But for most other cases, people don’t have any idea of how to resize the browser window, so they will get too long lines.

@Tyler, ask: Good tips!