Talking with Dan Rubin of Pro CSS Techniques
On Thursday Dan Rubin, of superfluousbanter.org and recent co-author of “Pro CSS Techniques“, came to Washington DC to speak to our local Refresh group. I had the privilege of meeting with Dan at the meeting and then later that day and the next over some drinks. Dan being a designer at heart and a fellow entrepreneur made for a very intriguing and highly enjoyable conversation. And to top it off, I managed to snag a signed copy of his new book; a great read!
If anyone has the opportunity to hear Dan speak, I highly suggest not missing out. Dan spoke to our local Refresh group – a group of the best and brightest new media developers in the DC metro area. His topic was to be an overview of his “Pro CSS Techniques” – however, I suppose you hear what you want to hear; because I found it to be much more than that. My take away was a supportive and defensive position on the importance of design and good design’s ability to be incorporated into well structured, clean and valid mark-up.
Dan focused a majority of his attention on chapter six, “hacks and workarounds” – more specifically, “A sample layout that doesn’t need hacks”. The layout he focused on can be found online at http://www.danielrubin.org/process/nohacks. While Dan’s focus was on how this simple layout was possible to achieve with no hacks and clean mark-up – it is important to note that this is a visually pleasing design that didn’t have to be compromised either. Another key take-away, especially for those of you new to the front-end-development side of things, was the use of background images to keep your mark-up clean and help bring your concepts to life. One thing that I learned was the ability to attached a background image to the <html> element – however, not very practical as it doesn’t work in earlier versions if Internet Explorer (I remember trying this a year ago with little success).
A topic of much debate was the use of hacks vs. the use of conditional comments. One thing Dan and the group recognized was the necessity for hacks, especially within real-world development situations. It is the nature of the beast – if you’re up against a tight deadline, you sometimes don’t have a choice. While many of us spend countless hours and late nights ensuring our code beyond the design is just as pleasant; it isn’t always practical. In complete agreement with Dan, when asked, he proclaimed that he believes the design should never be compromised for the sake of the code – everything is possible, it just might take a few extra <div> tags and a few unfortunate hacks. Back to the original topic — conditional comments were the mutual preference of the entire audience. That being an entire post in itself – I’ll just mention a few reasons for the preference. Conditional comments are bit more organized, extensible, and safer when adjusting for future browser releases. Hacks make very big and very broad assumptions about particular browsers while conditional comments make very specific rules for very specific browsers, even specific versions.
This was one of those great presentations; you know the ones where you almost want to walk out during just so you can go home and start working – extremely inspirational. I’ve been rather busy this weekend, but managed to make it through half of Dan’s new book, “Pro CSS Techniques” – thus far I would call it a “must read”! For some of you this will only be a refresher (but who of us can’t use that?) and for others this will be one of those great eye-opening, “I can’t believe I haven’t been doing this” type experiences. I should mention that the book is also co-authored by Jeff Croft and Ian Lloyd. On top of the presentation being a success and the book’s positive reviews – Dan himself is definitely a must-meet if you have the opportunity (he’ll be at SXSW). There are three things I can really appreciate in a colleague within this industry – someone who appreciates design, someone who appreciates web standards and someone I can drink a few beers with and not just talk about design and web standards.
- January 8th, 2007
- 5comments
- I am a proud member of the 9rules network
CSS always looks great, but browser compatibility can be an issue to wrestle with when getting started.
Completely agree. If you are new to CSS, Dan’s book might not be the best to start with. However, if you’ve been playing with CSS for a while now, this book will help you ehance those skills. A lot of chapters that cover practicial use and application.
Hehe! Good work!
I am so thankful for finding your website!
Very, very nice work! Thak you.