Ionrock Dot Org

Lately I have read a bit on the CSS framworks like Blueprint. The primary criticism I find is that people feel like it is a reversion to adding visual details within the content. To an extent I agree, but at the same time, I wonder if the strict purity between style and content is required at the client level.

If you look at some of the more pragmatic decisions of the day such as constraints in Rails and Amazon web services providing fast services over up to date service, you see a theme. The general idea is that what matters is the user's perception. When it comes to writing HTML and presenting a document that is rendered in the browser, the requirement that the actual code is completely semantic seems a bit rough. I'm not saying lets head back to spacer gifs and tables, but it seems like adding extra classes to elements isn't the end of the world. After all, it is easy to strip them off and get leaner markup using XSLT.

It is a tough call because the one person who needs pure markup will probably always cause a stink, but lately I've wondered if the cost of the stinker is totally appropriate. As I am not a designer and do not work in a static world, my opinions are probably biased. With that said, the aversion to things like Javascript and CSS hacks makes me wonder if the web design world could use a leader advocating rational and pragmatic development of themes. It seems if this happened we could see a XSLT renaissance, as it is easily the most well suited for this kind of operation. It is also possible that the lack of pragmatism (in my opinion at least) could be due to the dislike of XSLT. In either case, I hope that the design and layout world of the web continues to come up with interesting ideas and ways of designing web sites and applications.