What are the best css designs?

[Mark Johnson]

Oddly enough, I found it difficult, using Google, to find a list of
best-of sites based on the quality of their css packages.

So I'd ask. Does anyone know of particularly good sites which are in
good measure because of their creative and useful css designs? I'm
aware of Zen Garden and a few others. So don't bother with those. And
I hope I don't get replies from people with a 'tin ear' and no design
sense. Good sites. Good pages. That's what I'm asking about - not
mediocre stuff.

[Spartanicus]

Mark Johnson <10*******@comp userve.com> wrote:

participati on in these groups is very low (~0), so this is probably not
a good place to ask. Asking in a place where designers hang out isn't
likely to yield better results because designers rarely use html and css
properly.

I was inspired by the Zen Garden stuff, for example. Do they just do
it all wrong, as it were?

If you mean designers, then I'd say most don't know and/or care for
issues like structure, accessability and usability. They typically only
care about design. Accessability, structure and usability are typically
the domain of coders, coders in turn mostly don't know much about
design.

The trick is to pair a designer and a coder. Training a designer to work
with the strengths of the medium (fluidity etc.) is the hard bit.

--
Spartanicus

[Andrew Thompson]

On Sun, 25 Apr 2004 15:51:38 +0100, Spartanicus wrote:

The trick is to pair a designer and a coder. Training a designer to work
with the strengths of the medium (fluidity etc.) is the hard bit.

Whereas the designer might reason that
aptitude for 'good design' is something
you either have, or lack.

They would probably be horrified at the
thought of trying to 'teach design' to
some ..code hack. ;-)

--
Andrew Thompson
http://www.PhySci.org/ Open-source software suite
http://www.PhySci.org/codes/ Web & IT Help
http://www.1point1C.org/ Science & Technology

[Andrew Thompson]

On Sun, 25 Apr 2004 15:51:38 +0100, Spartanicus wrote:

The trick is to pair a designer and a coder. Training a designer to work
with the strengths of the medium (fluidity etc.) is the hard bit.

Whereas the designer might reason that
aptitude for 'good design' is something
you either have, or lack.

They would probably be horrified at the
thought of trying to 'teach design' to
some ..code hack. ;-)

--
Andrew Thompson
http://www.PhySci.org/ Open-source software suite
http://www.PhySci.org/codes/ Web & IT Help
http://www.1point1C.org/ Science & Technology

[Mark Johnson]

Spartanicus <[e-mail] > wrote:

Mark Johnson <10*******@comp userve.com> wrote:

participatio n in these groups is very low (~0), so this is probably not
a good place to ask. Asking in a place where designers hang out isn't
likely to yield better results because designers rarely use html and css
properly.
I was inspired by the Zen Garden stuff, for example. Do they just do
it all wrong, as it were?

If you mean designers

I mean the Zen Garden stuff. They have the aural styles. The pages
degrade flawlessly. What problems do you find with:
issues like structure, accessability and usability.

[Mark Johnson]

Spartanicus <[e-mail] > wrote:

Mark Johnson <10*******@comp userve.com> wrote:

participatio n in these groups is very low (~0), so this is probably not
a good place to ask. Asking in a place where designers hang out isn't
likely to yield better results because designers rarely use html and css
properly.
I was inspired by the Zen Garden stuff, for example. Do they just do
it all wrong, as it were?

If you mean designers

I mean the Zen Garden stuff. They have the aural styles. The pages
degrade flawlessly. What problems do you find with:
issues like structure, accessability and usability.

[Spartanicus]

Andrew Thompson <Se********@www .invalid> wrote:

The trick is to pair a designer and a coder. Training a designer to work
with the strengths of the medium (fluidity etc.) is the hard bit.
Whereas the designer might reason that
aptitude for 'good design' is something
you either have, or lack.

I'd go along with that, but I don't see how that relates to my point
(which is that many designers attempt to combat the strengths of the web
by refusing to release control over things like fonts, window size
etc.).
They would probably be horrified at the
thought of trying to 'teach design' to
some ..code hack. ;-)

Who's suggesting that they should?

--
Spartanicus

[Spartanicus]

Andrew Thompson <Se********@www .invalid> wrote:

The trick is to pair a designer and a coder. Training a designer to work
with the strengths of the medium (fluidity etc.) is the hard bit.
Whereas the designer might reason that
aptitude for 'good design' is something
you either have, or lack.

I'd go along with that, but I don't see how that relates to my point
(which is that many designers attempt to combat the strengths of the web
by refusing to release control over things like fonts, window size
etc.).
They would probably be horrified at the
thought of trying to 'teach design' to
some ..code hack. ;-)

Who's suggesting that they should?

--
Spartanicus

[Brian]

Mark Johnson wrote:

I was inspired by the Zen Garden stuff, for example. Do they just do
it all wrong, as it were?

CSS Zen Garden is an interesting example of what is possible with css,
just how fancy a visual design you can create with only CSS (attached to
html strict). Some principles of web accessibility are violated by that
site. For example, the "Wiggles" layout falls apart completely in
Mozilla 1.6/Win2k, and some of the content is only visible with
javascript. Other stylesheets use microfonts, which is the wrong way to
go on the web imho.

However, that's not really the point of the site. It was created to
allow anyone to create a stylesheet and show off. And it succeeds in
doing that.

I would not advocate using fonts for the main text of a document to be
anything other than 100% of the user's chosen or browser default font
size. I would never advocate relying on js for anything. But if a visual
designer who saw that site were convinced that creativity does not have
to be sacrificed in order to achieve accessibility or flexibility, then
I'd say job well done.

--
Brian (remove "invalid" from my address to email me)
http://www.tsmchughs.com/

[Brian]

Mark Johnson wrote:

I was inspired by the Zen Garden stuff, for example. Do they just do
it all wrong, as it were?

CSS Zen Garden is an interesting example of what is possible with css,
just how fancy a visual design you can create with only CSS (attached to
html strict). Some principles of web accessibility are violated by that
site. For example, the "Wiggles" layout falls apart completely in
Mozilla 1.6/Win2k, and some of the content is only visible with
javascript. Other stylesheets use microfonts, which is the wrong way to
go on the web imho.

However, that's not really the point of the site. It was created to
allow anyone to create a stylesheet and show off. And it succeeds in
doing that.

I would not advocate using fonts for the main text of a document to be
anything other than 100% of the user's chosen or browser default font
size. I would never advocate relying on js for anything. But if a visual
designer who saw that site were convinced that creativity does not have
to be sacrificed in order to achieve accessibility or flexibility, then
I'd say job well done.

--
Brian (remove "invalid" from my address to email me)
http://www.tsmchughs.com/

[Darin McGrew]

Mark Johnson <10*******@comp userve.com> wrote:

I was inspired by the Zen Garden stuff, for example. Do they just do
it all wrong, as it were?

One accessibility problem with many of the CSS Zen Garden designs is a
result of the (rather artificial) constraints of the project. Many of the
designs use CSS to hide a specific bit of text, and then display an image
in its place. This breaks accessibility when CSS is supported, but images
are not downloaded. But in production situations, one would use an image
with appropriate ALT text.

And many of the designs don't adapt very gracefully to different sizes of
browser windows, or different default font sizes. But what else is new?
That problem is hardly unique to the CSS Zen Garden.
--
Darin McGrew, mc****@stanford alumni.org, http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/
Web Design Group, da***@htmlhelp. com, http://www.HTMLHelp.com/

"Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance."