CSS @ Ten: The Next Big Thing

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/cssatten

by ivankirigin • 19 years ago

17 12 19 years ago

nickb2• 19 years ago

Yes, just what we need... more ways to make webpages look shitty, bloated and unreadable. Over the past 4 years, I've personally done at least two dozen usability studies and every one of the tests showed that simplicity always trumps elaborate design. No matter what you're trying to accomplish, you're always better off sticking to what people expect. People are used to Verdana, Times, Arial. I hate some of these fonts but people will test better if you stick to those fonts. Also, a lot of fonts just don't look great on screen and test even worse on readability. MS spent a lot of time on properly hinting these fonts so they are easy to read. By giving beginners this web fonts option, you're giving them more bullets to screw things up.

Now, one place where you think this stuff would help is Linux. Since Linux doesn't come with these "standard" web fonts, you need to substitute. Problem is that you cannot just put a link to these fonts inside your CSS since they're copyrighted by MS. So we're back to square one.

Rant: I wish Opera, MS etc. spent some time working on getting CSS2 working properly! They're already pushing for CSS3 and yet BASIC stuff, like box model, is all over the map and you still need hacks to get stuff working in multiple browsers. How about these companies (cough, MS) spend time getting the bugs out of current code so they can pass all those CSS tests instead of pushing even more useless stuff? Opera's JS is still subpar and supporting it takes a lot of tweaking.

ivankirigin2• 19 years ago

Anything that lets designers get closer to their intent is good. You can't blame tools for bad design.

nickb2• 19 years ago

Fact is, people don't care about design. They care about usability.

Another fact, "ugly" sites sell better too: http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2006/mar/27prt.html

asdflkj2• 19 years ago

You can blame the tools if the only kind of intent they let designers get closer to is misguided intent. I can't think of a single use for non-standard fonts. In that, they are much like flashing images or control over the LEDs on your keyboard. Would you like designers to have that at their disposal, too?

spiralhead• 19 years ago

Re: your rant

This is exactly why I'm seriously considering Flex for my next project. Progress in browsers is now moving at a glacier's pace. It still sucks. It's still incredibly limiting. Appealing to the W3C and Microsoft to fix stuff is like getting the government to act swiftly on something for which there is no immediate need. It basically won't happen.

karzeem• 19 years ago

I agree with you on the shabby state of CSS support, but it's hard to see how more font options will be bad for design. Horrible designs will always exist, so the fact that they have more fonts to choose from won't make them worse. It'll just make them bad in new ways.

For good designers, though, wider support of more fonts is wonderful. There's a reason that rich print typography developed in the first place. And at the very least, we can begin to kiss sIFR goodbye.

henning• 19 years ago

Oh boy, a new generation of annoying, unreadable websites!

This along with Flex (who needs to copy/paste/bookmark things on the Internet?) is going to make the web of the future really fucking annoying. I can't wait! Dare I say, it is a GAME-CHANGER. Yeah, I said it, whatchoo gon' do?

CSS @ Ten: The Next Big Thing

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