A belated update to Transcending CSS (not an April Fools’ joke)
I always vowed that I wouldn’t update Transcending CSS, but there’s always been something about that old book that disappointed me and now I have the chance to fix it.
I wrote Transcending CSS during 2006. Ancient times. One of my ‘transcendent CSS principles’ was to “Use Semantic Naming Conventions and microformats.” To illustrate one reason why they’re important I told a story about how two designers, Dave Shea—he of the CSS Zen Garden—and Doug Bowman—now creative director at Twitter—swapped CSS files for an April Fools’ gag back in 2004.
From Transcending CSS:
Naming conventions can make for hours of geeky fun
Designers Douglas Bowman and Dave Shea made geeks smile on April Fools’ Day 2004 when they swapped their style sheets and stole each other’s designs. Although their swap was intended to be fun, Bowman and Shea were inadvertently making a serious point.
(I hated how the publisher made me refer to people by their surnames.)
I then went on to discuss how, if Doug and Dave had given their structural elements the same names, their swap would’ve been easier, before talking about the separation of content from presentation, giving users control over it and the possible benefits for accessibility.
For the book I’d wanted to show large screen captures of their swap across two facing pages, but after two years, their designs had changed and I couldn’t find archives of both designs during the swap. So instead, I included two small images of their then, current designs and overlaid factually incorrect id values. I faked it. No one noticed, but I felt it spoiled that part of the book.
I’m never going to completely update Transcending CSS. There will never be a second edition, but when I found out today—eight years after writing the book—that archives of the swap do exist, I couldn’t resist writing a minor update here.
As well as being a great April Fools’ gag, Doug and Dave’ swap did make an important point. It also helped to demonstrate the potential and importance of CSS and guarantee its future, something that even in 2004 was not entirely certain. It deserves to be remembered as an important part of our web design history.
- Doug’s Stopdesign wearing Dave’s Mezzoblue’s design
- Dave’s Mezzoblue’s wearing Doug’s Stopdesign stylesheet
- Doug and Dave explain the swap and what went into it