Comments on: Levels of CSS knowledge

By: Manda Webs»Archivo del blog » Tutorial de HTML semántico y CSS

Manda Webs»Archivo del blog » Tutorial de HTML semántico y CSS — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:14:31 +0000

[...] Descubrí las CSS por casualidad. Intentaba cambiar el estilo de un subrayado, y no encontré otra forma de hacerlo que con CSS. Pero lejos de resolver mis problemas de claridad de código, ésto no hizo sino complicarlo más, ya que mezclaba estilos css dentro de las etiquetas HTML, combinadas con los atributos de estilo que ya contenían esas etiquetas. ¿Suena lioso? Pues hacerlo todavía lo era más. Acababa de llegar al nivel 1 de conocimiento de CSS. [...]

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:37:45 +0000

@Carla Pendergraft: You know, CSS is a tried technology. I’ve used it professionally for two years now, and about two more on private sites. There is really no need for tables. Really. I also work in a highly agile environment where things change often, and I thank CSS for me being able to change that quickly.

Opacity is a CSS3 feature, so it’s hardly working anywhere. Floats do work, have worked for a long while, and replace tables nicely.

You can write bad CSS, but you don’t have to, do you? If YOU know what’s good and bad, there’s no reason to repeat what others did.

By: Carla Pendergraft

Carla Pendergraft — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:26:16 +0000

You know, I just think it has to relate back to your goals. If your goal is purity, go for pure CSS. If your goal is to rapidly produce websites that use tried and true methods (and for me, that’s a combination of tables and CSS), then a hybrid approach is best. I look for the way I can get a properly working, stable website up and running without fuss. Once the browsers are better at implementing CSS in a consistent way, I’ll make the switch to the “pure” system.

And my complaint against CSS is that every time I use some clever new technique (example: opacity), it breaks in Safari or whatever. It wastes my time because of the inconsistent rendering. You know, we used to have font tags peppered all over our pages. In some ways, things haven’t improved. I have seen style sheets that were so ridiculously long, I can’t imagine anyone could have understood them. We’ve separate the replacement for our old font tags from the actual content, but sometimes it doesn’t look like the greatest improvement to me, if one is in favor of simplicity.

By: HTMLとCSS 番外編「CSS知識レベル」 - MSNET Team Blog

HTMLとCSS 番外編「CSS知識レベル」 - MSNET Team Blog — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 04:42:52 +0000

[...] Levels of CSS knowledge http://friendlybit.com/css/levels-of-css-knowledge…; [...]

By: miko

miko — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:41:39 +0000

pogi ako

By: lyndonaus

lyndonaus — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 06:47:37 +0000

Level-wise, I think I am somewhere in L4 but scratching hard to climb up to L5.
I do web sites for non-profit organisations as a volunteer, having developed my interest over the last couple of years in my retirement. I believe that standards should be followed and it is so frustrating when I (and thousands of others)discover that IE does not do as expected.
For the second time to-day I find myself in awe at the ease in which layout problems can be solved so easily, particularly, those relating to IE6 using code from this site.
Thanks again!!!

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 06:58:45 +0000

@Dmitri Farkov: Yes, sorry. Got a little annoyed with the “skimmed over your article and think you’ve fundamentally misunderstood CSS”. I see now that you didn’t mean it like that.

By: Dmitri Farkov

Dmitri Farkov — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 03:54:53 +0000

@Emil Stenström: Just a tad rude, no?

By: Siegfried

Siegfried — Sat, 17 May 2008 16:47:00 +0000

Interesting. And fun to read. Although i wonder what level i’d be :)
I’m a software developer since more than 30 years now. I got hands on computers before the mouse was invented, and so i’m used to use console and extremely simple text editors for all. As i see it, this has some advantages in understanding what’s going on.
Web coding is not my profession, it is more a hobby. So i’m not bothered with pressure to blow out half-done sites and have every time to tinker with the features and possibilities of the web. I really do understand people not having the time to produce perfect pages.
The separation of different parts is bare basics in software development and is called modularization. So separating content (and its semantics) from presentation and behaviour for me was quite logical. Although it took some time to actually do this consequently (more or less :) ). I think it’s worth every second of learning it. And in fact, if you do it really consequently you do not need more time to produce sites, you need less time. But if you stick to combining all three parts into the html, and then just pro forma pull out the css into a separate file you have a hard time.
So consequently i do not agree with one of the statements found at the w3c. There it says, that the main purpose of class and id attributes is to provide a handle to css (presentation). That could not be true. Those classes and attributes are part of the html and as this part of the semantic. So consequently classes and ids are to be used to add semantics to a content. In cases of div and span this means setting the only semantics this content has, since these 2 do not have own semantics. For other elements class and id attributes are to make the semantics of their content more precise. This adding to semantic has absolutely nothing to do with presentation. These classes _can_ be used as css handles, but their main purpose is pure semantics, nothing else. If you are able to separate that consequently, you actually do not style words, you style semantics. And if you do so, you have a much easier way then afterwards. And, as a nice benefit, you get a much easier maintenance for sites then. The only drawback is that you have to master a long and sometimes painful learning curve. And this is the longer, the more experienced you are with html 3.2.

By: CSS Bilgi Seviyeleri | Jnbn - evliya-i web

CSS Bilgi Seviyeleri | Jnbn - evliya-i web — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:24:43 +0000

[...] eğlence, biraz ciddi olarak Emil Stenström, CSS kodlayanların bilgi seviyelerini derecelendirmiş. Siberkultur üzerinde erenemre’ de güzel ve anlaşılır yorumuyla iyi bir paylaşıma imza [...]

By: resimler

resimler — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:10:44 +0000

Excellent breakdown. Most people would have tried to break it into 3 levels, but I think all 6 of yours are necessary and distinct.

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 11:05:50 +0000

@Dmitri Farkov: If you had followed the site more closely you shouldn’t have to point out silly things like that. Of course tabular data should be in tables.

By: Dmitri Farkov

Dmitri Farkov — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 03:55:42 +0000

Skimmed over. One problem I have is the statement that CSS is better. I am sure you meant it for the layout purposes. One must never forget though, tables are designed for tabular data, no amount of css will replace formatting of tabular data in tables. Very humorous article otherwise.

By: NicMartel

NicMartel — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 13:07:26 +0000

Emil, thank you for the pointer… I had looked and looked and found nothing… hopefully this will do the trick. I actually do not need help, as I have since coded my first layout to match the above description… was just trying get some up-front information to save me from finding out the hard way that CSS may not meet my requirement. Thank you.

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 20:43:55 +0000

@NicMartel: This is not the right place to get help coding a full CSS layout. Try googling for “layout gala”, you might find something there.