Silly assumptions, again

[vakkotaur]

One of the web sites I check on fairly regularly has a message that is seen if it is viewed without Cascading Style Sheets (CSS):

If you can read this, either the style sheet didn't load or you have an older browser that doesn't support style sheets. Try clearing your browser cache and refreshing the page.

Well, it's actually right: the style sheet didn't load. I don't want it to load. I want to read the page in my color scheme, with the text at a legible point size, and not have the content all squished over to one side with a big column of advertising taking up useful space.

Other sites have similar, often more insulting, messages. "Hey, go get a real browser." only worded slightly better (listing a few browsers, generally none of which I choose to use). It's not that I can't view it the way the site author thinks I should, it's that I do not desire to view the site that way. With a single click I can view it "as designed" and at many sites I have and clicked right back to get something I can stand to look at.

The whole freaking point of CSS was to separate the information content from the decorations and let people choose to see the content as they prefer. It was not meant to inflict some so-called web designer's idea of kewl on the site viewer. But that seems to be the way it gets used.

A simple "No style sheet loaded" message would be fine. The "You are not getting the full experience of this site..." sort of message (which covers CSS, javascript, and Flash abuse) makes me think of some documentary that called it "the Vietnam experience" rather than a war. Most site "experiences" seem to be like the "Vietnam experience": a poorly thought out, ugly, bungled mess.

Comments

[thecanuckguy.livejournal.com]

As a web designer, I agree with a lot of what you say (especially the last sentence. Sadly, clients *want* the flashy mess, and I don't offer it, because I can't design that way, I won't design that way, and plain HTML is much better for the customer and viewer which they don't realize and I can't convince them of. This is why I have very few clients, I gather.)

However, also as a "so-called web designer" I do use CSS a lot to design my pages, or, in other terms, inflict my idea of how I want the page to look (at least to the customer's satisfaction, not necessarily "kewl"), and turning it off would be not visually appealing and keep most people away from the site (see above comment about people _wanting_ "kewl"). If you don't mind browsing an ugly-looking page, that's fine, I'm happy with that. But I'm going to design it in CSS so that it looks nice for everyone else.

(I would be interested to see what you think of some of the sites I've designed, like http://www.homepagesplus.com, and those listed under the "portfolio" page, without CSS, or at least by using the CSS guidelines you use for most pages instead of their inflicted choice.)

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I used "kewl" because of the difference between it and a proper cool or even simply useful: Kewl sites suck. As for the page you listed? Sans CSS it is quite readable. The layout changes some, but mainly all that happens is the image moves to into the text area and I get to scroll down just a bit to read the few lines. Overall, I say it was a pretty graceful degradation. There are sites that force me to choose between unusable and unreadable - and not just from a bright background I don't like.

The other sites generally degrade well as well. In many case I think the non-CSS result is cleaner looking, but that's me. The national anthem site, having a huge menu, results in significant downward scrolling, but that's the extent of it.

My rant or rantlet was not the use of CSS, which I do consider to be a good thing (I use it, at least some, on the ACME Delivery site after all) but the annoying message(s) given to people when some oft-abused feature is disabled.

As an example: I find it endlessly amusing that ACME Delivery is a joke but still beats DHL's (a real shipping company!) own site in being able to say what it is without telling the viewer to adjust his browser. Go to ACME and you get a welcome page and a menu. Go to DHL and you get told to switch on javascript as the sole content of the page. I've never written any javascript and I know enough that I could do better AND still tell people to turn on javascript. But no "Welcome to DHL" or blurb about what DHL does, just a redirect with a nastygram. The redirect introduces another problem: if I do enable scripting, I can't just hit reload and get something useful. A simple welcome and a polite message in a noscript section would be much better. There are times I am willing to enable javascript, such as for package tracking stuff (It shouldn't be needed, but the result is useful enough...) but shouldn't I be able to find out about the company, from their own web site, without script? By comparison, UPS, USPS (and yes, Canada Post), and FedEx at least tell me who they are and give a hint of what they do.

[thecanuckguy.livejournal.com]

The national anthem site, having a huge menu, results in significant downward scrolling, but that's the extent of it.

Yeah, I recently had the idea to change that to a PHP include script instead of a (somewhat dated) iframe tag, when I get the time, I'll do that, will probably help that.

My rant [was about] the annoying message(s) given to people when some oft-abused feature is disabled.

One would think the better way to do it, if you *really* want a cool feature (Flash, Java, etc) is to make it with that and design the site *without* as the "no javascript" option instead of the hauty message as the no java option. (Sure, the no javascript option might not give the "kool" look you want (although you'll be surprised at how close it can get), but most people view it with it on anyways, so you might as well not alienate the rest of them.

I've never written any javascript and I know enough that I could do better AND still tell people to turn on javascript. But no "Welcome to DHL" or blurb about what DHL does, just a redirect with a nastygram.

And this is why big companies like whoever designed DHL's site (more than likely they hire their own guy) get paid big bucks and they get all the jobs, and guys like me, who make pages that *work* and are *sensible* and **STILL** do the exact same job a "kewl" site can do but more sensibly, don't get paid anything. I can't count how many times I've been tempted to just throw in the towel and start designing pages heavily Flash-based and Javascript-dependent and get businesses' attention that way so that I can make some money at this!

OK, rant off.

[yakko.livejournal.com]

A simple "No style sheet loaded" message would be fine.

Even better, why doesn't the page just degrade gracefully without making the reader feel like they're missing something? Not everyone has, or even desires, the browser that does all the "coolest" stuff.

I can't stand pages that think they have such a dire dependency on javascript that their content won't show without it enabled. The worst offenders are those sites which just appear to be blank when I go to them, but show the content when javascript is allowed. There are others (Reuters, I'm calling you out) who feel the need to make page navigation depend on javascript, so I get a 404 when I try navigating to the next page with javascript disabled.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Agreed. And I switched scripting on for reuters once. Just once. I found the second page of the story was just a few lines that could easily have been on the first page and certainly nothing worth enabling scripting for. So I didn't bother doing that again, and won't be.

[thecanuckguy.livejournal.com]

I can't stand pages that think they have such a dire dependency on javascript that their content won't show without it enabled.

I just came across one of these examples today, at 5 Gum's site (done for the sole purpose of researching a point in my most recent blog post). Before it could do anything, it said that I needed to load Adobe Flash Player 9. "Grr" I say. "I already have Flash Player some version. Can't it work with any version?" Click "No". Page doesn't do anything. *sigh*. Fine, reload. Click yes. Downloads it, says I have to restart Firefox to load it. Grr, I'm getting quite annoyed by this point, but I do so now just to see this end. Call up 5's site again. "Adobe Flash Player 9 is needed. Install now?" "AARGH! I just *did* install it, you stupid site! I'm researching via another avenue."

Since I've already determined by their television advertising (which I allude to in my blog) that they are geared at the 15-25 crowd, I'm not surprised that the site (however one can see it) is heavily Flash-based. The youth of today seem to like that. The youth of today are idiots.

[foolscap001.livejournal.com]

I commend the following to your attention:

http://www.mozilla.org/unix/customizing.html#usercss
http://dbaron.org/css/user/
http://userstyles.org/

CSS-capable browsers let you specify a style sheet that will override that of the pages the browser views.