Valid CSS Is Irrelevant
Someone recently posted on the css-d list (a useful place to learn more about practical CSS) a very ugly hack which proudly announced at the end “this hack is valid CSS3″. Well, great. Does that mean that whatever flaw in the target browser (in this case Safari) the hack was used to work around will bring other browsers to their knees when they catch up in CSS support? Not a great approach to web site building.
I am not anti-hack. Recently I resorted to an amazing filter: hack to get around an inheritance bug in IE6, and I use * html in pretty much every stylesheet I write. But normally I am compensating for some major lack of support in the still-unfortunately-widespread IE6 that other contemporary browsers have (eg no min-height). I think hacking for leading-edge browsers is a bad idea, and try to confine myself to hacks that can do no harm in the future (I don’t use the underscore hack, but it’s a safe one, as it’s unlikely new browsers will suddenly start supporting it.)
And as for “valid CSS” – I could care less. zoom:? filter:? Ok, if it works. Valid HTML - yes, please. That’s future-proofing. But isn’t CSS where we shunt all the complexity and ugliness that used to be in the markup? One day there may be an elegant and easy-to-understand layout language, but sadly CSS ain’t it.
In my view, as developers we are custodians of the information entrusted to us. In trying to make it appear on screen as intended we should add as little cruft to the markup as possible to achieve the desired look and feel. CSS and Javascript are tools to add visual appeal and functionality to the basic information. These need to be future-proofed too, of course, but we must accept that they are of secondary importance and some day they may be superceded.
Aiming for valid CSS is fine, and won’t it be nice when it’s all we need? But we mustn’t fool ourselves into thinking that if it validates we can’t have done anything wrong.
I totally agree with this, when I code my sites I work by the rule: If you need to hack the css then you’ve coded it wrong.
When I design sites I design with all browsers in mind so I won’t need to hack the css.
Comment by Keith — November 13, 2006 @ 1:00 pm
Valid CSS works fine in EVERY common browser, IE6 included. Microsoft provided the conditional comments functionality precisely so you don’t need to hack your CSS to make IE-only adjustments using perfectly-valid CSS. A few lines of conditional comments included into HTML is not “cruft”.
Comment by David — November 13, 2006 @ 10:26 pm
David, if only it were just the ugly comment lines in the head of every document on your site. That, for me, would be enough reason not to use them, but there’s also the extra complexity in debugging and maintaining extra IE-specific stylesheets.
Do you break your main stylesheet into smaller components? If you do, do you have a separate hacked stylesheet for each component? Aargh!
Organizing CSS is difficult, but important. Me, I prefer to keep my IE hacks close to the standards code that works on the same area of the page.
Comment by frontend — April 13, 2007 @ 12:33 pm
In which country do you live? :)
Comment by browser firefox — March 20, 2008 @ 8:48 pm
CSS “Cascading Style Sheets” Lessons
css list style Properties and examples — http://css-lessons.ucoz.com/list-css-examples.htm
Comment by Saç Dökülmesi Bakımı — August 11, 2008 @ 8:35 pm