On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 3:33 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
On 12/25/2011 03:16 AM, Mouse wrote:
> The _real_ problem with CSS, though, is that it's on the wrong end of
> the HTTP link. ?Content providers should not be presentation imposers.
One of the loudest laments I remember from traditional media producers
(publishers, editors, graphic artists, writers, journalists, etc.)
about the Web when it was new was "OMG! We can't control the exact
user experience for all of our readers and they *need* us to do that
for them!" They were used to the size, the color, the font, the look,
everything about the finished product being exactly as it was when it
left their hands. One of the features of settings in the browser was
the ability for people with different sized screens, or different
thicknesses of glasses or whatever to tweak the appearance for their
preference or convenience.
It's one of the reasons that PDFs exist - they de-abstracted delivered
content back to a virtual rendering of a printed page that you could
then print out. PDF features were built-in to lock users out of
altering the rendered appearance, partially as DRM and partially to
enforce the content producer's emissions as the be-all-end-all of the
content.
CSS to me is a footnote of that - it centralizes that enforcement so
that it takes less labor to tweak or re-work a style, but it's just,
IMO, a macro system for extracting formatting out of the primary
document and centralizing it. What I can't stand is when, frequently,
due to network congestion or load or whatever, when I get the HTML
page but _not_ the CSS to go with it. I see raw spewage from one page
or another several times a week because of this. They _could_ embed
the style information inside the primary document, but that adds back
in the labor savings of a single centrally-maintained style sheet, so
I rarely see embedded style info these days.
?This is 100% true of course, but just as with HTTP
itself, the world of
technologically-inept morons who can spot a potential marketing mechanism in
ANYTHING have perverted it beyond all recognition.
I'd call that the second wave... after the content producers were
satisfied that they could once again maintain their control, they
settled down and the marketing types moved in to exploit the
landscape.
?And to add insult to injury, when you try to teach
them about any of this,
they assume the "that's just your opinion!" attitude...which is pretty
damn
arrogant coming from people who have no idea of where this stuff came from
or why it was brought into existence in the first place. ?People Who Weren't
There, in other words, trying to tell People Who Were There about stuff.
There's plenty of that to go around (like AOL "telling" Time-Warner
how the business world and the Internet was going to be... we all know
how well that ended up for AOL - Disclaimer: I used to work for
AOL-Time-Warner and saw more than I care to remember of that while it
was unfolding).
-ethan