What does “The CSS Awards” even mean?
Oct 06 - by: David Sparks
Bellow is a screen shot of my issues with “The CSS Awards”. The rating system makes little sense. When i saw the name, I immediately questioned how you can give an award based on CSS which by comparison is a rigid and unintelligent language. It makes things pretty, and it isn’t actually even smart in the way it goes about doing so. Absolutely no logic rules are involved. Simply Select, declare, instruct. In terms of CSS, there are of course many ways of doing things, but like Photoshop, not any one way is really a default best way. Certain cases call for certain methods. I like the patch tool in PS. My co-worker prefers the clone stamp. Both have similar effects. The same goes with CSS. A lot of times its a matter of preference on how to tackle an issue.
This was my gut reaction to the name “The CSS Awards” but I decided to check it out. Upon looking at the featured site of the day, which is a cool site, i looked at the rating system and the my reservations were confirmed. Flaws exposed.
The grading categories are as follows:
- Design
- Creativity
- Usability
- Content
Breaking the Problem Down:
Neither Design or Content have anything to do with CSS. Design is just that. The design or artistic direction a site has. CSS is merely the conduit to which the design is conveyed and made possible. Content has even less to do with CSS. At least CSS is required to make the design possible. CSS and content, by definition i must remind you, are separated. When I learned CSS this was at the core of the philosophy behind CSS. “keep your content and design separate”, yet here at The CSS Awards, content is a platform upon which your site is graded. Starting to wonder if these guys actually know what CSS is used for.
Creativity could have something to do in awarding a site based on its CSS, assuming it’s referring to creatively written CSS but in todays featured site, I would say the creativity being referenced is from some use of JS. But I go back to my point in that when it comes to putting a site on the web, the creative part doesn’t typically have too much to do with the CSS being that it only does one thing. Style, and again, it doesn’t do it intelligentl .
One could argue usability MIGHT be applicable, however this is more based on UI which doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with CSS or semantic XHTML. I guess my issue is the semantics of the name “The CSS Awards”. How can you even actually judge a site based on CSS. The CSS Awards even make my case for me. Only 2 of the categories vaguely have any relation to actual CSS and it’s debatable how strong of a connection that is.
