Another reason to use (or not to use) CSS Layouts
With Opera 9 and the Firefox Styleish plugin users can write their own stylesheets for individual sites. If you're using CSS, they can do whatever they like to your layout to make it look like they want it to. I see this as a complement in a way - the user likes your site enough to bother with creating a separte stylesheet to see it the way he/she wants to.
As a user, I love this. There are some sites I read quite often that do not work the way I'd like them to. Take, for example, the default C|net l ayout, and my new layout with my own CSS applied. Much better (But not perfect because their coding is a mess!). It's also a big help with those layouts that insist on using a fixed width that is too wide for my preferred viewing area. The only problem? It only works when sites are using CSS, and only when you can figure out their code
Now, as a web publisher, there are questions: do you want users to be able to redesign your site? What if they're blocking your advertising (which most do)? (I've blocked advertising at C|net because it was way overkill, but on other sites I don't. If I like the site, I don't mind helping them out a bit by checking out their ads once in awhile )
And before you bring it up - this isn't something that's just restricted to people who know how to write CSS. At dig there are several alternate stylesheets being distributed by users. I can see the need to develop a respository of alternate stylesheets for popular sites that anyone can use (there's an idea for you!).
I think this brings in a whole new era of the user driven web. Not only can they use any browser, device, or screen display, they can change how your site looks. So what's a web designer to do? I think we can do our best to create a layout that works for the majority, but acknowledge that others might change that. And why shouldn't they? If they like your site enough to bother to change the layout then that must be a good thing. And if they can't, they might go someplace else.
And if you don't want them to be able to change stuff, use tables or write incomprehensible xHTML/CSS
ETA: Come to think of it, someone developed alternate stylesheets for TWF that people really liked I'd be open to offering them as alternate skins.
Megan posted this at 13:14 — 30th June 2006.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
Sidenote: to do this in Opera, design your custom stylesheet and save it on your computer. Important - because Opera currently overrides the user stylsheet with the Author stylesheet, you need add !important to your CSS to get it to override the default. I've asked them to change this behaviour.
Back in the browser, right click and choose "Edit Site Preferences". From the display tab, enter the CSS file you just saved in the "My Style Sheet" field. Now, from the magnifying glass pop-down, use the mode drop-down to select "Manage Modes", make sure page stylesheet and user stylesheet are both selected under "Author Mode".
Megan
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waffles posted this at 15:06 — 30th June 2006.
They have: 54 posts
Joined: Jun 2006
I'd still want to design it well. They have to see my site the first time, dont' they? It does give some hope for people who don't design as well because they can have it "fixed" by the user.
waffles Radio Coming to a set of speakers near you September 2006
demonhale posted this at 05:46 — 1st July 2006.
He has: 3,278 posts
Joined: May 2005
Thats a kewl opera feature... it has come to mind sometimes to make a different theme for a site... like TWF... color options, etc, some fancy stuff for fun...
Greg K posted this at 06:19 — 1st July 2006.
He has: 2,145 posts
Joined: Nov 2003
As my design and layout skills royally suck, I'd be glad to hear from visotrs their layouts tha they think are better
As for disabling advertisements, I do that on some sites with firefox by right clicking on the image, and choose BLOCK IMAGES FROM (web server) as the ads are ususally on a different server, (like at cnn.com)
I do love in the webdeveloper toolbar (sure you can do it elsewhere), the ability to DISABLE ALL stylesheets for some myspace sites, some are just not compatable with firefox (ie. scrolling text is on a layer OVER the main content, not allowing you to click on the link on the main contents.
I do like for playing around purposes, in webdeveloper toolbar, to be able to view the CSS file, and actively alter it's settings and see the result sriht away, good way for me to learn.
-Greg
Abhishek Reddy posted this at 08:04 — 1st July 2006.
He has: 3,348 posts
Joined: Jul 2001
I used to use it a lot in Firefox. On other sites, mostly to make text readable or to fix bugs. Online books and many low-budget sites go for the totally unstyled "document" look (default font styles etc, but with increasingly sensible semantic markup these days). Among other things, it kills small text with superb ease.
I did give it a shot as a development tool as well. Was handy for debugging and playing with sites that were posted on TWF with a question. The Web Dev extension's UI was no good though, and I'm pretty sure it had a bunch of bugs that weren't fixed across a few releases. Although, the problem could also have been with Firefox itself as other bits were causing grief too, leading me to shift away almost entirely.
As far as I know, Konqueror doesn't have this level of functionality with its user stylesheets. I've been looking for a way to do it, with no luck. Now I'm toying with the idea of writing a hacky script or plugin somehow.
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