Posted by mrcakey on 06/11/25 12:02

"Harlan Messinger" <hmessinger.removethis@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:606rnpF1oqkjoU1@mid.individual.net...
> asdf wrote:
>> "dorayme" <doraymeRidThis@optusnet.com.au> wrote in message
>> news:doraymeRidThis-F70554.14321028012008@news-vip.optusnet.com.au...
>>> In article
>>> <479d4601$0$10796$5a62ac22@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au>,
>>> "asdf" <asdf@asdf.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Many webpages - J.Korpela's website pages, to take an example -
>>>>> are pleasing enough. If they were "more pleasing" than they
>>>>> needed to be, they would look ugly. The insatiable desire for
>>>>> pleasures of the eye often come from those who are not that
>>>>> interested in the substantial things in an informational or
>>>>> teaching website. They misunderstand the product they are dealing
>>>>> with and their demands are quite unreasonable and superficial.
>>>>>
>>>> Ok... we seem to have stumbled upon a point of agreement... that many
>>>> websites are produced by designers (and I use the term VERY loosely
>>>> here)
>>>> that are trying too hard to impress. ...
>>>> In my own case, as a producer AND consumer of web designs, I prefer
>>>> that the
>>>> design *enhances* and *emphasises* the content,
>>> I can see it is not going to be easy to get my idea across. You
>>> talk of a design enhancing and emphasising the content as if the
>>> design is something like a deodorant spray or an inessential coat
>>> of paint in the dunny.
>>>
>>
>> Then you missed the point. The 'design' is an intrinsically essential
>> part of communicating the message. Content PLUS presentation is the
>> message.
>
> How is the message differing from page to page to page on all the
> variously pages at www.csszengarden.com?

I looooooooove this one: http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/202/202.css,
although it's not great fun if you actually want to read it. The message I
get from that one is "CSS is great fun but you can really screw things up",
whereas the message I get from this one:
http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=094/094.css is "CSS is great fun and
you can really enhance your presentation with it".

In any case, the markup has also been "designed" to be as flexible as
possible - it's a mass of divs and spans. To use the old house-building
model, the markup is the structure (which still has to be designed) and the
CSS is the decoration.

But I'm working myself into a corner as to where the "engineering" part
comes in. I was about to go on that the markup language itself was designed
this way, the browser was designed that way, the transfer protocols were
designed the other way et cetera et cetera, but then I thought if HTTP is
not engineering what exactly is? Maybe it doesn't exist?

+mrcakey

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