Some of the Top Minds in the World of CSS and why you should be following their Work…

When I started learning CSS, I did some research to find out who were the best people at the time sharing their knowledge online. I found that this was the best way of learning CSS by myself. Of course, I wasn’t learning CSS by myself, I recruited the…

Thanks again

@Ionut: I’m a bit relieved that the part you’re making a point about is the HTM. It doesn’t mean, of course, that HTML and CSS don’t live hand in hand with each other, but I must confess I’m more fascinated about exploring the possibilities that lay on CSS applied to some simple semantic markup.

In regards to the article on 24 Ways, as Tom pointed out, its purpose is to introduce the readers to what’s been done. Be it a solid, final spec or something more experimental. For example, there are hundreds of articles on the Web explaining how to use the box-shadow property (even recently published CSS books), but it wouldn’t be nice to point out how that property has been removed from the spec now.

Also, the 24 Ways article’s title may be a bit misleading: most of the article is about explaining how a form can be styled in an interesting way using just CSS.

But thanks for commenting on that, it’s your informed opinion, and I’ll be more than happy to investigate it further.

About your last remark, that’s just mean. I love what I do, and I love writing about it. I realise that a lot of people are coming fresh to CSS everyday, and are sometimes working in an environment that doesn’t invite experimentation. I’m glad and, I don’t mind saying, proud, every time someone tells me that some post I wrote on my blog introduced them to something new in CSS. I make an effort to come up with new content, and lose many sleeping hours to write those articles, and that’s because I really think someone can benefit from that. If I “impress novices” or gain “undeserved notoriety”, well… what can I do?

Sorry for the long comment, I realise now it’s far longer than what I had in mind

I totally agree with Ionut here. Not playing by XHTML (XML) rules and leaving unquoted attribute values and empty attributes is proof of, well, lack of experience not to call it newbie-ness.

To me this is as lame as the following PHP line:
if(true){ return 1; } else { return 0; }
Why the else? It’s not gonna reach that if it exists on first return so, experienced people will write:
if(true){ return 1; } return 0;
or best:
return true ? 1 : 0;

I hate this Web2.0 world where everyone is a coding / Web-Developer / money making guru … just lacks the skills and lower level understanding how it all fits together. Nevertheless they have huge following, misleading them too.

PS: Message to the TABLE haters: there are layouts you will in no way achieve without TABLEs or the display=”table-…” styles (PERIOD).

My problem is not with the used tags, nor the standards compliancy. I’m well aware what those are.
My problem is with the good (actually bad) practice in writting code. Just because HTML 5 specs allows unquoted attributes, it doesn’t mean we should use them. Same goes for the empty attributes.
In my opinion, a experienced coder would think twice before jumping ten years into the past and start using some of the most “evil” HTML features, denying the benefits of the strict coding technique enforced by the XHTML standards. This is what bothers me most, along with the lack of consistency that comes with this kind of coding and the obvious attempt to “show off”.
Why “show off”? Well, if you’d look through Yaili’s portfolio, you’ll see some nice XHTML 1.0 Strict coded websites. Why the jump from the strict and consistent syntax of XHTML to the loose syntax of old-school HTML? If she’d love so much the HTML syntax she could have easily use it before, with a HTML 4.01 Doctype. So, I only see 2 reasons for this: she either had no clue of HTML before HTML 5, or she just wants to show off her “knowledge” regarding “the latest techniques” available on the web.

Now, I don’t have a personal problem with Yaili. It just happens that she’s the last one I came across lately. There are many others just like her around the web, doing this kind of things just to impress novices in order to gain some more (undeserved) notoriety and I hate seeing people promoting these poor values.

Yaili has implemented HTML5 into the form as documented here. It introduces some useful techniques such as the placeholder attribute. Go back and look at the code in more detail if you’re having trouble understanding it.

Tell me how does this look to you: (a) more like some sweet, well-formed 2010 HTML 5 or (b) more like nasty 2000 HTML tag-soup?
http://screencast.com/t/ZDc2YThiMj

Are you sure this is the kind of coder you’d want to learn from?

In case you haven’t recognized it, the code is from Yaili’s “Have a Field Day with HTML5 Forms” Top article…

P.S.: I hope that, unlike the “24 ways” policy to reject all comments against or highlighting flaws within their articles, the “InspectElement” admin(s)/authors will allow people, with different opinions than their own, to freely speak their mind… Thank you!