Mixing L7 and CSS is tooootally nice: Best of Bootie 07: Pretend We’re Alala (L7 vs. CSS). Naughty, yes.

I’m in. Have a few things to sort out anyway, hopefully this will force me to act sooner…

Update: CSS is back — here’s a screenshot of the unstyled site

Now I’m doing a job where I’ll do the design bit — but where someone else will do the actual implementation. So now I’ll have to get the message with regards to styling across to someone else, something I can complain about endlessly when graphic designers fail to do that properly when handing over stuff to me.

Style guides are a genre in themselves and I suspect they take a lot more time to do thatn one might think. So I thought about the most precise way to describe styling I know. Turns out it’s the css itself.

Why not just do the css for the various bits that need styling yourself? It’s accurate, saves time as your time is spent anyway and it allows your techie to just copy and paste — and if you’re good at css, chances are you’ll do a better job than the techie.

There are obvious disadvantages:

While the overall styling of typography is easy to do and probably won’t interfere with the way the implementation itself is done, styling of sections etc. can prove difficult as far as naming is concerned. Just as you can’t skip making notes on gutters and other overall layout decisions you don’t know how are implemented.

On the other hand, if you stick to meaningful names (as you should), as a minimum it will be easy to understand — best case it can work as a platform for the actual code running the site. In any case the techie will have to understand your code anyway and should be able to just use as much of it as is possible. A few Photoshop notes which explains what’s what should be plenty of information.

So the person cutting up your design gets all the measures whereever he needs to go in anyway, all the overall styling information is provided ready for use by you as css (no more looking at every single font for size, color etc.) and your style guide job is limited to putting in notes on the names you’ve used in the css and some info on overall thoughts on grid and concept.

In situations where you work with the same developers over and over, this could prove even more useful as you get to know each other’s coding style.

Not exactly rocket science, I know — but I’ll try and give it a spin.

I’m still amazed that we’re still having these discussions, trying to persuade poor coders to get their act together and the advertising people (who should’ve stuck to print ads instead of messing with a biz they apparantly don’t understand) that going for ‘pixel-perfect’ doesn’t make us think they’re really cool as they demand good quality…

Cross-Browser means “functioning in different browsers” not “looking the same”

I still get the “I have a background in graphic design so of course I want it to look perfect — just as the printouts I gave you”. Newsflash: You can’t have it that way. And your job’s in danger.