[Wsuug] Conditional CSS revisited

[Andrew Jaswa]

On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 10:18 AM, Reese <reese at inkworkswell.com> wrote:

> Who is opposed to shiny, sparkling clean code at the presentation level?

If by sparkling clean code you mean valid markup then I'm all for it.
If you mean pretty code, I could care less. You can have valid ugly
looking code. View source (CSS and JS) on gmail or really any Google
web based product. Their code isn't "nice" looking. I'm sure that they
have nice looking code that they produce on the backend of things
before it gets processed by the servers. And I would bet that it is
because they want maintainable code.



> Sure, it means slightly more obfuscated code behind the scenes, so do
> microformats - which I half-heartedly oppose because they increase my
> work load, even though I really do intuitively understand the benefits
> they provide.

Umm... If written properly the "useful" uF don't really add that much
work to markup because you are probably going to write classes for
things.

Anyways...

"Clean" code on the presentation level doesn't matter. It doesn't
matter from a browser stand point or from a screen reader stand point.
What matters is it being valid and maintainable. If
conditional-css.com adds another level I have to maintain, I'm doing a
disservice to me, my clients and my users.

The only level it might matter to be pretty is from a an error
checking standpoint. It is said that female coders write better code
because they spend the time to make it pretty. Which in turn brings
syntax errors to the forefront because they are easier to see.

They only article can find about this is here:
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/03/code_like_a_gir.html
I know there is a better one but I can't find it right now.


-- 
Andrew Jaswa
andrewjaswa.com
wsuug.org