CSS: anybody heard of it?

[BungleBob]

This is a kinda cheeky question, hopefully thought provoking to any of you who have had anything to do with building a rentals website.

Have you heard of CSS or "standards based" web design?

This is a new(ish) standard that involves using stylesheets to create the look and feel of a site i.e. no <table>s, etc. You're probably wondering what this techie stuff has to do with a holiday rentals website...

CSS designs benefit from:

1) Higher recognition by the search engines.

2) A separation of content from layout - this means much easier ongoing maintance.

3) Excellent accessibility for disabled users. There's a lot more people in this group than you may think. Studies show up to 20% of users make use of special tools to aid website readability. This figure increases with the age of users.

4) Readability on multiple platforms i.e. any screen, PDA's, fridges or printers - YES, enquirers COULD finally print your property details properly from the web!

I make the point because we haven't come across a single rentals site which uses this design approach, although it is becoming increasingly popular across the web. Blogger is the best example of the idea in practice.

To the non-designer, this will be mumbo jumbo. But the benefits are well documented and can make BIG differences to the overall success of a site in terms of marketing and accessibility.

I'd be interested to hear of anyone who's looked seriously at these developments. We're already rebuilding our sites.

[Dave Kinder]

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets ) have been around for a good few years now.

From what I've read they are mainly used in larger sites which are frequently updated. The obvious advantage is that instead of having to update countless number of pages, amendments are made within the style sheet and all pages using this "style" are updated.

Individual rental sites are generally stable, apart from adding more tempting pictures and the yearly change of rates, so style sheets are not usually seen as a necessity.

[BungleBob]

Hi Dave

This goes a long way beyond standard CSS, which most sites already use.

"Standards based" is taking it to the point of using CSS 100% for layout rather than simply typography i.e. you don't use <table>, aligns or any other layout markup in your HTML code. Content is completely seperate from style.

For examples, take a look at:
http://www.csszengarden.com/

Rich

[Dave Kinder]

Rich

Visited the link, impressive stuff. I've downloaded the samples and although I'm no graphic artist I think my weekend's now accounted for.

Dave

[Tom]

I'll...get my coat...

[livinginitaly]

When CSS first became 'mainstream' (well to me anyway!) i was amazed. I converted a mainly text site, built on 10 pages with an average page 'weight' of around 25k. After conversion, the average page weight was less than 4k!

That really showed me how tables can 'bulk' up a site and slow it down. However, not only do tables add 'real' weight to a page, they also add 'virtual' weight .... in so far as in a table with 20 rows (for example), the text in the top row will not display until the very last row has been 'cached' into the browser.

With CSS, everything is basically 'modular' and can be loaded in any sequence almost instantly.

That said, for many of the sites we've been working on lately we've been unable to fully utilise CSS mainly because of the lack of cross browser standardisation.

A table site, will look pretty much the same when viewed in IE, Netscape, Moz, Opera, Firefox etc, etc, as well as PC & Mac. Unfortunately, the same can't be said of many CSS designs.

I'm not saying that it's 'impossible', i'm just saying that it's not anywhere near as straight forward. Many people (myself included) start developing a new site with a design in mind. For CSS, you have to start with the framework or 'box model' in mind, any other way and you'll find yourself spending twice as long making the site work 'multi browser' as you spent building it in the first place.

Whilst i'd prefer to work in CSS (i can see all the advantages) often time or financial pressure dictate otherwise.

As for bringing 'Standards' into the debate ....... personally, i see that as something to 'aim' for, knowing full well i'll fall short in some area or another

[BungleBob]

Great to see someone else has felt our pain! How long ago did you play with this stuff? Cross-browser support is looking pretty darn great to me. You're bang on: it's a different way of working, not altogether easy to get your head around. It's taken me a while, but when the penny did drop - BANG!

I know what you mean on standards although the disability rights groups in the US have become very belligerent, with court cases against some sites for lack of access. European law has also enshrined a standards-based approach and UK groups seem to be getting more vocal in using the legislation. The table-less CSS approach seems to offer the perfect solution to all these issues.

If you get close to a working version - let me know! We'd love to take a look.

Cheers,

Rich

[paolo]

Sorry I can't contribute to this discussion. To answer the original question, yes I have heard of CSS, and it's used in this site. But I don't use it for the sites I have done for my properties. Should I? The CSS I could implement would only control the various text types, not the layout.

[BungleBob]

I think for all the reasons in the original post you should be using the approach. The caveat is that it's a very different and I certainly haven't seen a WYSIWYG editor which copes properly with it, so the learning curve could be steep if you aren't a natural coder.

For single property or smaller self-build sites, I think this may be too much. However if you use a web designer, it offers a fantastic way to seperate the pretty stuff they do with the content stuff the site owner will work on.

For larger sites, I think it's a must. The engines much prefer standards-based code and for that reason alone you'll start seeing the early adopters pulling ahead in the rankings. Given the better accessibility, I'd imagine they'll see a higher visitor/enquiry ratio too.

Paolo - I think for your web reviews, standards compliance should start playing a part in the overall rating. It's getting adopted, and is certainly something to look out for in the coming year. The web marches on.

[livinginitaly]

We've been in and out of 'pure CSS' for a while now .... it really is the 'holy grail' of webdesign. Our attempts to actually design a pure css site for clients, began around 2 years ago.

Frustratingly, whilst the clients have been happy, i'll admit that in my opinion, we've never really produced a pure CSS model that has 'everything' covered.

Thats not entirely surprising however, even the 'idol' of CSS design www.csszengarden.com (bunglebob mentions it earlier) falls apart in the Opera browser!

Yes, disability groups are in uproar about lack of access to most sites on the internet. However, they are targeting the 'large corporations' to gain maximum 'coverage' for their cause.

Regarding holiday let sites, if anyone really is worried about their site being 'standards compliant', you just better hope that everything about your premises, service and communication methods, is / are 'disability friendly' too.

To check your own site, visit .....

http://validator.w3.org

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator

http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp

If anyone has a multi page site that meets with the standards of all 3, across all browsers, i'd be really delighted to take a look

[Chris Radford]

This dialogue may mean something to techies but it seems very remote from holiday rental owners?

Is there any chance that these posts could be translated. I understand basic web design but this is another language?

My appeal is to ask for explanations to e accesible to all - not remote and in obscure speak.

Any chance of a summary, I like the sound of the benefits but cannot make sense of the content

Chris

[livinginitaly]

Here's an excellent starting point for anyone wishing to know more about 'accessibility'.

http://diveintoaccessibility.org/

As has been mentioned, this is a topic that will feature increasingly over months and years to come. To 'cut to the chase', 'accessibility' is the desire to have every website 'readable' by all people on all devices.

That means, all formats of graphic browsers (IE, Netscape, etc), Text only browsers, Speech conversion browsers, computers with no mouse, computers with no keyboard, etc etc.

The link above is probably the best example of a 'fully accessible' website (and so it should be), but for most uses and certainly for the Travel Industry, a website without graphics is like a 'cheese sandwich' without the 'cheese' ... it just doesn't work.

So to get round this, you can use various 'programs' called 'browser sniffers' ... these quickly check what type of browser each visitor to your site is using and decides which version of your website to load and display. Downsides of this of course, is that designing multiple versions of your site is both costly and / or time consuming.

'Pure CSS' is aimed at getting around the need for multiple sites, this is achieved (to some degree) by stripping the design of a site (pretty bits) from the navigation and content (important bits).

for example ...

http://www.webworks-uk.net/index.htm
http://www.webworks-uk.net/indexnocss.htm

This is the same exact page but with the CSS link taken out, to demonstrate how it would look in a text only browser (not pretty). It can be quickly navigated using the tab & enter key.

Sadly, in my opinion, all browsers (IE, Netscape etc) don't treat the CSS the same which often results in the site design looking 'wrong' in certain browsers. Graphics and text can be displayed on different sides of the screen, carefully lined up text can suddenly all go 'skewed' and many, many other variations of 'wrong'.

Accessibility, 'is' important and in fact is 'crucial' to some sites, depending on your target audienence. However, not all of the Government websites are accessible and many of the biggest 'blue chip' companies have a long way to go before meeting all the criteria (most haven't even taken any steps at all). Therefore, i believe further down the line, where most of us 'real website owners' reside, having my site 'accessible to all' to be something to 'steer towards' rather than have that as my final destination.

[Darren]

Chris, to put it into simplistic non techie talk CSS is a code which is used to make the website more efficient in speed and compatibility with browsers like internet explorer.

For holiday rental owners it means nothing unless you have a website, and want to ensure it is compatable with all browsers and downloads quickly.

Rich, livinginitaly - I've checked ten high profile travel sites, and not one of them is W3C validated. How many web designers code a site using these validations nowadays.. not many, because other factors have become more important.

[livinginitaly]

Hi Darren,

I really have to post a reply to this one, mainly due to the fact that you seem to have missed the point of this thread (as well as a couple of others i've been watching).

How many web designers code a site using these validations nowadays.. not many, because other factors have become more important.

How can other factors 'become' more important when CSS and Accessibility are 'the' latest buzzwords? However, their importance will not go away and sooner or later (hopefully later) we'll all 'have' to comply.

You also, seem to be implying that CSS and Accessibility are the same thing. They arn't, CSS can be used to aid Accessibility, but so can 'not' putting pale text on a pale background.

As you say, if you want to design a fast loading, easily maintainable website .... CSS is the way forward. Accessibility, which was the whole point of this thread i believe, isn't .... it's a pain in the backside that (in my opinion) should be avoided until the point where we're all dragged screaming into forced compliancy!

Some of us build websites for other people, some of these people are the ones who ask for some adherence to W3 guidelines, so we have to be aware of what is involved. We then go somewhere close to full Accessibility, depending on how much the client insists or wants to pay.

Please, please don't see this as a personal 'attack' .... i'm just trying to clarify a few points that i consider key to the thread. Boring though it has become

[BungleBob]

I've got to jump in and underline what Tony has said. Accessibility is important, in fact it's now enforceable by law and the legislation is being used against high profile sites to encourage the rest of us to tag along.

CSS is one route to full accessibility but this approach is new and it isn't easy. The original reason for my question was to guage how aware the rentals market was of these developments. Not very?

For self-builders and private owners reading the thread, I think the quick point to draw from this is that if you're designing a site, think hard about visitors and don't be tempted by all the crazy colours, funky effects, background music or any of the other tools offered in programs such as FrontPage or Dream Weaver. Also read up on what makes for good accessibility and implement what you can e.g. high contrast text.

I'll no doubt get shot to pieces on this final point but I'm really NOT a fan of self-build websites. I always recommend people use a trained designer - they get paid to know all this stuff and the end results are more attractive, more accessible, more trustworthy-looking websites for your visitors.

Don't be too hard on me: maybe I've seen one too many sites with bright blue backgrounds, pink text and the hokey-cokey coming through my speakers...