Comment Funny, coming from a UX guy (Score 1) 240
Judging by the output of the UX crowd over the past few years, they actually seem to believe that worse is better. It's kindof funny seeing him arguing against the proposition.
Judging by the output of the UX crowd over the past few years, they actually seem to believe that worse is better. It's kindof funny seeing him arguing against the proposition.
By that logic, everything sucks. C++, Haskell, HTML, all of it.
And yet, most of the code written in those languages results in a better track record than CSS. In fact, most professionally produced code that has problems fails in edge cases. Most the the CSS I encounter has problems in the main use cases.
sure, you can break things, but at least you'll usually get something that's still readable.
True, about 80% of the time when I have a problem with CSS-based pages, I can still sorta read the pages. Often I have to do annoying things like resize my browser, reduce my font sizes, or other types of workarounds before the page becomes readable, though, so that's sorta weak sauce. Nonetheless, there's still an annoying high rate of breakage -- I'd say about half of the websites I go to present some amount of functionality loss or unreadable text due to CSS.
But even worse than that, the limitations of CSS make web designers choose designs that are just bad (for instance, my own pet peeve of pages that have a fixed width or limited ability to handle arbitrary window sizes. Yes, you can do these properly with CSS, but it's much more difficult to do, so most web designers don't.
I'm not saying it's impossible to make a great, robust web page using CSS. I've done it. I am saying, however, that for nontrivial web pages it's much more difficult than making the equivalent page without it and it's much easier to mess it all up. In my view, that makes it a poor tool.
Sure, this is possible -- but if we're going to get that hysterical about the potential of ebola, then there are hundreds of other things we should be getting hysterical about first.
For the record, although there is some uncertainty about it, it appears that ebola may be able to exist for only a few hours outside the body (some studies say as long as a couple of days, though) on hard surfaces. It doesn't last more than a handful of minutes on soft surfaces such as fabrics.
Indeed it is. However, that's still a very poor method of transmission. Just getting infected fluids on your skin isn't enough for transmission to take place. The fluid has to enter a cut, abrasion, or mucous membrane.
I don't know. Given that most of the CSS-heavy sites I see routinely break or suck as a direct result of using CSS, its clear that most web developers don't know how to properly use it. And if, after 20 years, most developers don't know how to use a tool then I tend to think the fault is not the developers, the tool.
The problem with tables is that they generally were very inflexible.
True, but this problem can be worked around by using dynamically generated web pages -- which brings an additional benefit of still separating layout from content, if you feel that's important.
Trying to resize your browser (back in the day) often caused strange layout issues (and lets not forget the 1px transparent GIFs).
A problem that CSS has not actually resolved, judging by the number of websites that become unusable when I make my browser window my preferred size.
I do for my own web pages. The problem is that most of the pages on the web at large use CSS, and so the problems with CSS remain my problem regardless.
CSS has been a thorn in my side since it came out, and it still is (even though I don't do web development anymore). It's because of the difficulties with CSS that we have such terrible things as my personal pet peeve -- web pages that have fixed minimum or maximum widths. While CSS does have advantages, it also has disadvantages -- and the effects of those disadvantages on web site design in general very often makes the web less useful to me than it would otherwise be.
Then making it a point to shake hands with a lot of people in multiple areas.
That's fine. You won't catch ebola just by shaking their hand. You have to come into contact with their bodily fluids.
Am I the only one who isn't even slightly scared about ebola? It isn't transmitted through the air or casual contact, so its' pretty easy to avoid. What is there to be scared of?
It adds some, yes. But it also takes away other. BTW, by "functionality," I don't mean "features". I mean it more in terms of "fitness of purpose".
And while you're at it stop trashing good work that's going on in other projects - even if you don't agree with the direction it's going in.
What do you mean by "good work"? If I don't agree with the direction a project is going, then -- by definition -- I cannot consider that project to be "good work."
That list is meaningless, since you could easily put together an even longer list of things that have changed without anyone complaining about it.
In all fairness, the reason I have a problem with everything on that list (except Gnome 3, which I've never used) is because none of them meet my needs, desires, or solve problems I have. At the same time all of them presented additional problems that I didn't have before.
It's not a general "resistance to change" problem. It's a resistance to cost without benefit that's the "problem."
But on a desktop or a laptop? It's kinda appropriate there to be honest.
It's certainly not appropriate on my desktops and laptops. I hate it there just as much as on my servers.
Well said, I agree. I never liked Gnome, not even the most popular versions of it. I love KDE (although I've been loving the more recent versions less and less).
Viva la difference!!
"The identical is equal to itself, since it is different." -- Franco Spisani