Good advice from Chris, particularly if you’re the one who has to live with the CSS you write.
As Obi-Wan Kenobi once said, “You must do what you feel is right, of course.”
It seems like the misguided perception of needing to use complex tools and frameworks to build a website comes from a thinking that web browsers are inherently limited. When, in fact, browsers have evolved to a tremendous degree
This describes how I like to work too.
CSS is now the most powerful design tool for the Web.
I think this is now true. It’ll be interesting to see how this will affect tools and processes:
What I expect to see overall is that the perception and thus the role of CSS in the design process will change from being mainly a presentational styling tool at the end of the waterfall to a tool that is being used at the heart of making design decisions early on.
Over the past 10 years or so, we’ve slowly but very surely transitioned to a state where frameworks are the norm, and I think it’s a problem.
I concur.
Use the frameworks and libraries that make sense for you to deliver the best UX possible. But also learn the web platform from the ground up. Take time to understand how web browsers work and render webpages. Learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript. And keep an eye, if you can, on the new things.
Write meaningful HTML that communicates the structure of your document before any style or additional interactivity has loaded. Write CSS carefully, reason your methodology and stick to it, and feel empowered to skip frameworks. When it comes time to write JavaScript, write not too much, make sure you know what it all does, and above all, make sure the website works without it.
The whole article is great, and really charmingly written, with some golden nuggets embedded within, like:
- You’ll find that spending more time getting HTML right reveals or even anticipates and evades accessibility issues. It’s just easier to write accessible code if it’s got semantic foundations.
- In my experience, you will almost always spend more time overriding frameworks or compromising your design to fit the opinions of a framework.
- Always style from the absolute smallest screen your content will be rendered on first, and use
@media (min-width)queries to break to layouts that allow for more real estate as it becomes available.- If your site doesn’t work without JavaScript, your site doesn’t work.
- Always progressively enhance your apps, especially when you’re fucking with something as browser-critical as page routing.
Try writing your HTML in HTML, your CSS in CSS, and your JavaScript in JavaScript.
The joy of getting hands-on with HTML and CSS.
Worst buddy movie ever.
Under-engineering, over-engineering, wombling free.
The two faces of CSS.