About the Author

Hi, I'm Chris, a web developer and a founding member of Analog. I live and work in Brooklyn, NY.

CSS Naked Day

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 at 15:33:40 GMT
6 Comments
References

You might be wondering what happened to my design. As with years past (2007, 2008), I'm participating in CSS Naked Day to show my support for web standards, and to show off the design of shiflett.org:

The idea behind this event is to promote web standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of (X)HTML, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good ol' play on words. It's time to show off your <body>.

Although I haven't the time to fully explain this thought right now, you have to look beyond the surface to truly appreciate good design, so participating in CSS Naked Day does more to show off my design than to hide it.

This is what Håkon Wium Lie has to say about the event:

This is a fun idea, fully in line with the reasons for creating CSS in the first place. While most designers are attracted by the extra presentational capabilities, saving HTML from becoming a presentational language was probably a more important motivation for most people who participated in the beginning.

Is your site naked?

About This Post

CSS Naked Day was posted on Thu, 09 Apr 2009 at 15:33:40 GMT.

6 Comments

1. Chris Casciano said:

Your site may be naked [sorta, there's some inline styles like hiding the comment style guide], but your feed isn't!.

And I don't post that to be critical of you, or CSS naked day generally. Just pointing out how intertwined html, css [and js] are that by just unlinking a css file or two actually you're putting visitors into a very odd and possibly unreproducible state [network errors aside], rather then simulating what a well built site looks like in different user configured browsing conditions.

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 at 16:49:59 GMT Link

2. Chris Shiflett said:

You're right about the feed. I saw how funny that looked, given the context.

The rest makes sense. It's CSS Naked Day, not JS Naked Day or anything else. I like showing off good, semantic markup that adheres to standards. Removing JS would show off the design even more, but I'm just sticking to the rules. Everything should behave just fine without JS enabled.

The only thing I considered doing differently is disabling the print styles as well, but that doesn't really seem very important.

Thanks for calling me out on having my feed styled. I deserve that. :-)
Thu, 09 Apr 2009 at 21:55:44 GMT Link

3. John Wright said:

Chris,

When I first heard of CSS Naked Day, it sounded cool. I liked the idea and I'm all for web standards (and death to IE 6). But as I'm finding your site for the first time, and trying to find my way around it, the lack of CSS is, well... let's just say I'm looking forward to coming back tomorrow :)

John
Fri, 10 Apr 2009 at 00:21:53 GMT Link

4. Chris Shiflett said:

I know what you mean, John.

It's an interesting exercise. I find it useful to see if there are any usability problems without styles. The menu is very near the top to assist with navigation, but if you're having a hard time finding your way around, that's indicative of a problem. I'm not sure what the solution is, but it's useful to know that it could use improving.

Hope to see you back tomorrow. :-)
Fri, 10 Apr 2009 at 01:54:15 GMT Link

5. jQuery Howto said:

I will probably do Naked day comming year. And the best thing I can do it on blogger.com as well.

You can edit CSS in your templates :)
Sat, 18 Apr 2009 at 12:41:18 GMT Link

6. andyface said:

I do like the idea of CSS Naked Day, and in theory you should still be able to navigate the site easily without CSS, however I think that any confusion comes down to users just not being used to sites without styling. By being so used to sites in a block on the site with the various elements spaced out across the site and positioned to aid navigation any deviation from this is unfamiliar.

It's rare to find a site which is simply a list of data with the only definition between sections being font size and padding. So i'm not overly sure if there is a solution to this 'problem', was the solution not css?
Thu, 25 Jun 2009 at 08:53:47 GMT Link

Upcoming Talks

ConFoo

10 - 12 Mar 2010

At Hilton Montréal Bonaventure, Montréal, Canada.

South by Southwest

12 - 16 Mar 2010

At Austin Convention Center, Austin, Texas.

Dutch PHP Conference

10 - 12 Jun 2010

At TBD, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

O'Reilly Open Source Convention

19 - 23 Jul 2010

At Oregon Convention Center, Portland, Oregon.

New Comments

RyanTheGreat wrote:: Well, I'm not Chris, but I will do my best to address the questions raised in the comments by Ian...; Posted in Security Corner: Cross-Site Request Forgeries
Chris Shiflett wrote:: Thanks for the kind words, Simon. I'm glad you liked the tutorial. In case it's helpful, here'...; Posted in Webstock
Chris Shiflett wrote:: Hi Robin, I plan to post something about it, but it's going to be hard to express everything i...; Posted in Webstock
Simon Mahony wrote:: Hi Chris, I really enjoyed your workshop on the Evolution of Security at Webstock. I think I g...; Posted in Webstock
Robin Gorry wrote:: Hi Chris, I was wondering if you were going to post how Webstock went for you this year. I li...; Posted in Webstock