Yesterday, I quietly participated in Dustin Diaz’s CSS Naked Day event along with 1,674 other websites.
While I lot of people were having fun with the play on words, which is admittedly worth a laugh or three, I’ve been planning a solid version upgrade to address some nagging concerns that the previous design carried over. And now that the event is over, I still want to consider what it means to be naked without css. Because like it says on the box: “The idea behind this event is to promote Web Standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of (x)html, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good ‘ol play on words. It’s time to show off your <body>.”
Although many of my concerns were aesthetic, there were also some serious semantic and accessible issues that I felt needed my loving attention. When the design comes back online (hopefully this weekend), you’ll see that it will definitely be an improvement over the previous version, but without losing any of that character and personality that gave it life.
On a technical thought, I’m treating the entry page and the interior pages slightly differently as far as semantics go. Since the entry is a SUMMARY of the site, and an interior is an ARTICLE, I’m approaching it with the same tactic as that of a book. After all, how many books have the exact same heading structure on the chapter titles in the Table of Contents, as they do on the actual Chapter itself? Anyway, I’m digressing a bit. I mean to only point out the importance of evolving how you approach document structure on a project. Since this is my playground, if I get this structure right, it will likely saturate its way into my professional work. That, and I’m still working out the details, so don’t push me on the subject just yet. If I could figure out how to paint semantics and beautiful code as well as I handle Photoshop, I’d be rich by now.
So does this mean I’m playing the beta game on my site, making updates whenever I feel it necessary? Sure, if you consider regular and (might I say much-needed) enhanced improvements to an interface a beta item. Maybe I’ll just call it a point upgrade for now. Whatever it is, it’s for the good of the site, and for the good of everyone who comes here, so that can’t be a bad thing to pull off. Doing it during the Naked event just feels like an appropriate time to revisit my xhtml structure.
Here are a couple of recent links that inspire my thoughts on the subject:
[update: I’m at least going to apply the css that will allow the site to be more readable]
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