Don’t believe the hype John.   I understand and empathize with a number of your complaints about CSS but as anyone who has been in the IT field for any length of time will tell you, reality rarely if ever matches the hype.  Hyping is part of the business but we as users/consumers/developers (pick any) at this stage in the game should know better than to swallow the hook.

CSS is a standard written by the W3C for to help with the layout of web sites and applications.  I look at the use of CSS for web development like delivering a ham sandwich to a starving man.  No, it’s not a nourishing meal but it’s a damn sight better than what he’s been eating lately.  I love the fact that I can control so much of the site layout through one or two files.  I love the fact that I don’t need printer friendly pages (and the associated links).  I love the fact that CSS makes for much, much smaller page sizes and makes coding legibility easier.  We still use tables occasionally where necessary but have been able to nearly drive the spacer.gif to extinction and I wouldn’t want to put any of our style implementation through a standards checker.


CSS can be the book keeping headache as he mentions.  Styles inherit styles and cascade to styles.  If you’re not careful you can really mess things up down the chain.  I hate it but as a developer you should already be aware of how important book keeping can be.

Which leads to another thought, I get the feeling that CSS was viewed as the cure-all for the armchair/hobbyist developer.  It’s not.  I think the larger picture is one of feeling gullible for believing too much in something that he should have known better.  I’ve been guilty of this myself.  That’s why I keep receipts.

Listening to:  Danielson / Ships