Thoughts on LJ and style.
Nov. 9th, 2005 04:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
longwingOn the extremely off chance that anyone here actually witnessed my journal this morning (rather than conglomerated entries on their friends page), I sincerely apologize. I was toying with LJ's style sheets and visual formatting, much to the detriment of my poor LJ's appearance.
I oftentimes check my LJ during lunch at work, and while it is my spare time, I have had more than one half-joking comment about the use of the associations resources for personal benefit. I wanted a style that looks more formal, one that would fit in better in an office environment, and thus not glare out of my monitor from fifteen feet away. I'm not trying to disguise my jornal, it's my time and I'm allowed to use it, but I think my boss fells uncomfortable because it makes me look unprofessional. We don't get many visitors, but appearance is everything when they arrive. When I open the door, I am the face of the Organization. It helps if that face seems to be doing something "very important"(tm). As I'm not actually trying to disguise my journal, I ran into a number of challenges when coming up with an acceptable look. I wanted each entry to have it's icon beside it, as I use them to designate different kinds of entries. I also wanted a look which possessed at least a modicum of style. I finally settled on "A novel approach" as my default format.
"A novel approach" has a lot going for it, but I really hate how it co-opts the spacing methods I normally use. I understand the logic, by eliminating blank lines, it attempts to mimic the style of a novel. I just wish I could toggle the option. I use spacing in my formatting, for emphasis, and to designate separate sections of a single entry. The new format looks fine when you're just typing a lot of text, but when (like me) you want to create link or image heavy entries, it gets in your way. I could simply compensate for the style shift, but everyone else would wind up seeing a bunch of blank lines.
So I find myself, yet again, pouring over CSS docs. I need to do this for work anyways, but I was putting it off. I was putting it off because I hate CSS. There is practically nothing CSS does that tables couldn't do with half the code. I find the waste annoying, and I find the "designers who want the web to work like inDesign" factor a pain in the ass. HTML, the language I know, is dying. It's dying because everyone wants information to be pretty. I want information to be convenient and uniform. This puts me at odds with the prevailing thoughts on how to build the information super highway. Some day, I'll have to learn this stuff. Really learn it. Not because I need to, but because no one will hire a web guy who doesn't think in CSS.
To make matters worse, I'm pretty much doing this for myself. We only see someone else's style settings when commenting on their journal, and I'm thinking about setting it to show each user's configuration instead of my own. The problem boils down to an issue of personality, and the cult of individuality. We're all so determined to showcase our personal style in an online format that any given journal becomes an argument between appearance and function. Reading through a friends page requires skipping across a dozen different interfaces and formats, and while those formats tend to be pretty, it slows the actual purpose of the journal to a crawl.
Right, end rant. This is my brain on CSS, be warned.
I oftentimes check my LJ during lunch at work, and while it is my spare time, I have had more than one half-joking comment about the use of the associations resources for personal benefit. I wanted a style that looks more formal, one that would fit in better in an office environment, and thus not glare out of my monitor from fifteen feet away. I'm not trying to disguise my jornal, it's my time and I'm allowed to use it, but I think my boss fells uncomfortable because it makes me look unprofessional. We don't get many visitors, but appearance is everything when they arrive. When I open the door, I am the face of the Organization. It helps if that face seems to be doing something "very important"(tm). As I'm not actually trying to disguise my journal, I ran into a number of challenges when coming up with an acceptable look. I wanted each entry to have it's icon beside it, as I use them to designate different kinds of entries. I also wanted a look which possessed at least a modicum of style. I finally settled on "A novel approach" as my default format.
"A novel approach" has a lot going for it, but I really hate how it co-opts the spacing methods I normally use. I understand the logic, by eliminating blank lines, it attempts to mimic the style of a novel. I just wish I could toggle the option. I use spacing in my formatting, for emphasis, and to designate separate sections of a single entry. The new format looks fine when you're just typing a lot of text, but when (like me) you want to create link or image heavy entries, it gets in your way. I could simply compensate for the style shift, but everyone else would wind up seeing a bunch of blank lines.
So I find myself, yet again, pouring over CSS docs. I need to do this for work anyways, but I was putting it off. I was putting it off because I hate CSS. There is practically nothing CSS does that tables couldn't do with half the code. I find the waste annoying, and I find the "designers who want the web to work like inDesign" factor a pain in the ass. HTML, the language I know, is dying. It's dying because everyone wants information to be pretty. I want information to be convenient and uniform. This puts me at odds with the prevailing thoughts on how to build the information super highway. Some day, I'll have to learn this stuff. Really learn it. Not because I need to, but because no one will hire a web guy who doesn't think in CSS.
To make matters worse, I'm pretty much doing this for myself. We only see someone else's style settings when commenting on their journal, and I'm thinking about setting it to show each user's configuration instead of my own. The problem boils down to an issue of personality, and the cult of individuality. We're all so determined to showcase our personal style in an online format that any given journal becomes an argument between appearance and function. Reading through a friends page requires skipping across a dozen different interfaces and formats, and while those formats tend to be pretty, it slows the actual purpose of the journal to a crawl.
Right, end rant. This is my brain on CSS, be warned.
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-09 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-10 04:21 pm (UTC)The problem basically boils down to CSS's roots as a programmer's language. CSS espouses the kind of function and variable based logic typical of C, Java, BASIC, PASCAL, etc. That kind of logic is perfect when dealing with thousands of lines of code, the modularity saves untold hours of retyping what you've already done, but when applied to a single document, it actually creates waste instead of removing it. The previous sentence is a perfect example, my use of italics required 7 characters. If I wanted to do it the right way, using CSS, I'd have to set up a style, and then designate that word as part of the style. Several lines of code, all to produce a 7 character effect.
Sure, I can then reformat the entire document on the fly, replace the style with a new style and all italics would wind up pink and in bold. Is that kind of flexibility actually needed though? If I wanted to put it in pink, and bold, why didn't I set it up that way to start? I wouldn't have a complaint if CSS were being used solely to format the layout, but it tries to take over every aspect of formatting the document. I wouldn't have even ranted if I could've altered the paragraph spacing using header tags (like we're supposed to be able to do). Tables lack a lot of flexibility, and if CSS were just the new tables, I would have no complaint.
Mostly I'm just bitching and being a crotchety old fart. "Why can't they leave well enough alone?" shouldn't be a phrase I use. I just have different priorities. Data throughput is a serious concern to me. Why would I say something with a 5kb file when it can be said, just as decoratively, with a 2kb file? I spend a hell of a lot more time making sure I don't break a CSS than I ever did going back and removing all the bolds and replacing them with italics. Coders talk about efficiency like it's a religion, but in truth they're just gadget freaks who want more toys.
Anyways, that's the logic from inside my brain. The hyperbole of ranting blows most of this totally out of proportion. It's just annoying is all.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 02:28 am (UTC)